Red Seeds

by Luc Reid

I was nine, and my parents were watching a special news bulletin on TV late in the afternoon on a grindingly hot summer day. The aliens, who’d been just floating in the sky for more than eight months, ignoring every attempt to contact them and unhurt by any weapon we tried, had finally acted. They had dropped little red seeds from the sky that landed and ripped terrible gashes in the earth, hundreds of meters deep, razing houses and slashing roads and cutting rivers. They’d already done it in dozens of places: South Africa, Pakistan, Norway, Canada, Bolivia, France, Russia, New Zealand.

Out on the street, very faintly, I heard the rambling tinkle of the ice cream truck. I begged with my parents, waited the excruciating time it took for Dad to get his wallet, snatched the two quarters, ran, had to be called back to say “Thank you,” ran again, and caught up with the ice cream truck just at the end of the street, where Walter Biscayne was receiving not one, but two drumstick cones.

I remember it vividly. The sky was a scorched blue. The heat over the new-paved street wavered, as if we were all knee-deep in water. An oak tree three houses away was yellowing even though it was late July: probably it had some kind of blight or something. A housefly was sitting on Walter Biscayne’s shoulder, but he didn’t even notice.

Walter collected his cones. I ran to the window.

“Ice cream sandwich, please,” I said.

“Sorry, we’re out,” said the ice cream guy. And then I heard the blast, a torrential ripping noise. It knocked me into the truck and blew the little truck right over on its side. A horrible cracking sound came up from the ground. My forehead was bleeding. When the noise went away, I sat up and looked around me.

The ground had been torn open in a deep, gaping rent as long as half a dozen ocean liners end to end. Dust rained down from the sky. Four houses on our street were completely gone, obliterated. The only thing left of my house–or my parents–was a broken piece of the slide from the back yard. The crack stopped just short of Walter’s house.

So yes, despite everything they’ve done for us since, despite the fact that they never erased New York or crushed the Eiffel Tower, I still think the aliens need to be exterminated.

Is that enough to get me into your goddamned little resistance, or do I need to get some scalps first?