Sirens wailed nearby, signaling the townsfolk to take cover from a danger they had tried to convince themselves wasn’t real.

You couldn’t blame them… not really. It wasn’t like they had much time to accept the incoming news. And it wasn’t like the news sources in town were a hundred percent reliable. Even now, over half the town shrugged it off like it was just another drill. The townsfolk were so used to the news stations twisting any news story to fit some sense of false reality that not many even realized that ALL of the news stations were now broadcasting the exact same warning.

Allie didn’t know if it was real. She hoped they were wrong, but there was a sinking feeling in her gut that _something_ terrible was happening. But either way, she called through the house for her husband and kids.

_Better safe than sorry, _her mom’s infamous saying glided through the river of her thoughts, one of the many cliche sayings that she finds herself using more frequently nowadays.

She grabbed her emergency bag from the closet just as her husband was coming down the stairs, trailing behind him their two boys, one of them still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Mom, I wanna go back to bed!”, Kyle, the younger of the two, whined. He was only 5 and he clutched his dinosaur stuffy in one hand while he picked his nose with the other.

“Honey, you can’t be serious. You really think this is all real? And please, for the love of God, don’t say it,” James looked frustrated and definitely more than a little annoyed that she would have ‘bought into this’.

“Listen, right now, let’s just do what we always do and it’ll be one of those few times I’ll be happy to hear you say ‘I told you so,’ afterwards. Grab the gear and let’s go. You all know the drill… besides… _better safe than sorry,_” she said the last phrase with a grin on her face because she knew they were waiting to hear her say it, and the eye rolls and sighs that followed did not disappoint.

Over the past few years, the drills have become so common place that most of the townsfolk caved and had some form of a bomb shelter, or ‘evacuation zone’, built onto their property so they could be safe in the event of another world war.

This was different though. What the news was saying…? Allie shook her head and led her family out the back door. While most families built their shelter into their basement, Allie’s family had an old tornado shelter already built into the backyard, even though there’s never been a tornado blow through town in her lifetime. Or ever.

“What’s that?” Allie’s oldest son, Timothy, pointed towards the mountains in the distance where a weird greenish-yellow light seemed to hover over the mountain tops, almost like a fog slowly starting to spread and make it’s way toward town.

“That must be what the news is talking about. Although they didn’t say anything about poison gas at all…” James said. “Maybe it’s chemical warfare instead of bombs?”

“James, the news said nothing about a war, or bombs, or gas, so now you’re just making stuff up. We don’t know what it is. Let’s just get to safety,” Allie replied.

Allie unlatched the shelter, pulled the old wooden doors open, and let her boys in first, both her and James following behind. James latched the shelter doors, and they both went down the stairs into a large rectangular space made out of a thick cement. Outside of the cement wall, they were encased in a steel frame, with a large metal door that locked them into the room. Once they closed that metal door, the wailing sirens sounded very faint, almost not there at all.

They waited for the sirens to stop, and Allie felt a pit of dread in her chest when they lasted way longer than just a drill. The boys laid down on cots set up in the space and went back to sleep when they got tired of waiting, and James decided to do the same.

“You should get some sleep too. I’m sure it’ll be fine in the morning,” James said, and somehow fell asleep almost immediately.

Allie laid down too, but couldn’t quite get her eyes to shut. She was definitely a worrier. She tried listening to hear other sounds outside but the room she was in kept most sounds out. Before she realized it she drifted off into sleep.

***

Allie awoke with a start. She thought she heard a bang, or a crash. Maybe her dreams woke her up. She sat straight up and froze, listening. It was quiet. The sirens had stopped. Wondering what time it was, she looked at the clock hung up in the room. _5:34 am. _

__

She looked over at James, and realized he was up too.

“Did you hear it?” He whispered. “It sounds like someone’s out there. Could be our neighbors looking for us to let us know the drill’s over.”

“At 5:30 in the morning?” Allie said. “And apparently this is not a drill, so don’t go out looking to see what it is, remember, we’re supposed to wait it out. We don’t know what’s out there.”

“Allie. Come on. You always go to the worse case scenario. But I’ll wait a little longer at least. Let’s get the radio on and see what the news is saying now.”

James turned on their emergency radio and tuned into the local new station.

“…_to stop them. More information coming from around the world as we learn more. All we can say… ssssssssssss…. Indoors.. ssssssssssssss… doesn’t work… sssssssssssssssssssss…. We can’t trust…. sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss… much longer now. Stay…. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss”_

__

__

As the radio faded in and out of static, James tried hitting it a few times, but the static overtook the broadcast and he just turned it off.

“ARE YOU GUYS IN THERE?”

Allie nearly jumped out of her skin, but then breathed a sigh of relief when she placed the voice. It _was_ their neighbor. She heard Catherine shouting from just outside the metal door.

“Told you so,” said James as he started unlocking the door to the room.

“James, wait,” Allie grabbed his hand from the door, “I don’t have a good feeling about this… We should just stay here.”

“I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE ALL OK. IT’S SAFE TO COME OUT NOW!,” Catherine yelled through the door.

“It’s just Catherine, Allie. I’ll go look, talk to Catherine, and I’ll be right back,” James said as he opened the door slowly.

When he pushed it all the way open, Allie glanced out around him and saw that the old wooden doors at the top of the steps were ripped off their hinges, which was probably the noise that woke her up earlier. Catherine was nowhere to be seen.

“James, don’t go…” Allie pleaded. It didn’t look right, it didn’t feel right. Catherine sounded like she was right outside the door. Where was she?

James quietly took the steps up to where the wooden doors were and slowly popped his head above ground to look around. He started looking around in a circle and stopped about halfway, freezing in place. Allie saw his eyes widen in fear and his mouth open to say something, but instead, a scream erupted as she watched a long snakelike black tentacle with a barbed end slam into his face and tear through the back of his skull. The barbed end opened on the other side of his head into a dozen or so hooked finger like appendages that reached down and latched onto James’s back and lifted him up and tore him away from the shelter. And just like that, he was gone.

Somehow, Allie still heard his scream.

No. It was her screaming.

“MOM??”

Allie jumped back into reality, and though every urge wanted to run after him, or just fall down and cry, she remembered her two boys, forced herself to unfreeze, and backed up into the room. She started to close the door that somehow seemed extra heavy and moved way too slow.

“Allie, wait for me, don’t leave me out here!” Allie heard James scream and her breath caught. _It couldn’t be… I just saw…._ She looked through the crack left in the door and instead of James, she saw more of those tentacle-like arms out there, one of them open with what looked like… a mouth?… in the middle. “Allie, please wait.” James’s voice was coming out of that open mouth and that’s when Allie realized that those things must be able to mimic people’s voices. _Catherine…_

Tears streaming down her face, she went to slam the door shut, but only then realized the distraction had worked, she had turned and was looking at a barbed tip inches from her face, inside the room. She took one last look back at her boys, her thoughts racing. She couldn’t let this thing take her until she knew they were safe.

“Timothy…” Allie whispered, “I’m going to need you to close this door behind me. Be a strong, brave boy and please keep your brother safe. I’m so sorry and I love you two very much…”

She closed her eyes and dropped to the floor, hearing the alien above her strike and slam into the doorway. She opened the door just enough to crawl through, praying the alien chased her and would give her boys enough time to get the door shut before more came through.

She made it through the entrance to turn back and see the alien stalking her. It didn’t rush, because it knew she had nowhere to go. She saw Timothy creep towards the door and start to close it.

“_Better safe then sorry…” _Allie whispered to her son and breathed a sigh of relief as Timothy managed to shut the door, her final thought being that at least her sons will survive, even if she won’t.