I don’t think about that day very much. I make myself not think about it. I’m no schoolboy. I’ve made some bad decisions in my life and seen some bad things, but that day was… everything else pails in comparison.
I saw a family running, or trying to run, trying to make it over the cars or, sometimes, dropping on the pavement. It was a middle-aged father and mother with kids that had to be around eleven or twelve. Two of them. They were all holding hands in a line, with the father in the front. I didn’t even see what happened. I had turned my head for some reason but when I looked over, the father was searching for his family. They were separated in an instant. I remember the father screaming in panic, trying to fight his way back through the crowd of people trying to escape. I wanted to help, I mean, their kids, you know? But I just stood there like a coward, then joined the crowd flowing around me. I hated myself for it. In my mind, I like to tell myself he found them, and they made it out, but deep down, I know they didn’t. I didn’t stop.
He wipes his eyes
It was just a few minutes after that when I saw a mother—a young mother carrying a baby. Just them, no dad or husband, no other kids. The mom had the baby pulled tight to her chest and was trying to go over the cars with the crowds, but she wasn’t strong enough. She fell in between the vehicles and was gone, just like that. I couldn’t turn away again, so I moved in her direction but was immediately hit and thrown to the roof of the car. I got up quickly and pushed my way back up again. I wasn’t gentle. I looked for the mother but wasn’t able to see her anymore. There were so many people moving around me that I couldn’t even see where they had fallen. I… I wonder if I could have gotten her, you know? I think maybe I could have gotten the baby out if I had tried harder.
Stops talking and takes a few breaths. Then he looks at me and lets out a small laugh.
That’s why I don’t think about it much. I can’t. I’d never be able to function again, or I’d be filled with so much rage that… well, I’ve also learned not to let anger control me.
Eventually, the crowd began to slow, to disperse. It took a while. We must have run fifteen miles before we felt safe. It’s amazing how much fear can grip us and change us. It turns us into something primal, something only run by instinct. I ended up in a field of survivors about a mile or two away from the interstate. I had no idea where but after everyone calmed down, myself included, I was able to get some directions and from there, made my way to Flagstaff.
I don’t know how many people died on that interstate… I just can’t think about it.
Jeb Tanes
Memphis, Tennessee
I walk down Beal Street, Memphis’s famous blues street. It’s crowded with tourists and office workers seeking lunch. The soulful sound of the blues drifts down the street as I see Jeb sitting at an outdoor cafe. Jeb is in his early thirties, has light brown skin and the face of a much younger man. He is a slim man who has a scholar’s air.
It’s impressive, isn’t it? (He waves to the city around him.) Construction everywhere, though a lot hasn’t been finished, and at least we have Beal Street back. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Aliens attack us, and the infrastructure of the world’s largest cities is perfectly fine, but Memphis was burned to the ground. Not by them, but by us. We did it to ourselves.
I was lucky. Before Invasion Day, I was nineteen, a senior in high school. (Laughs.) I was older than my classmates because I had dropped out, and my mom made me go back. Said she’d “take care of me” if I didn’t. I was more scared of my mamma than any gang, so I went back.
I was playing ball with some of the guys from the neighborhood. I didn’t have many classes in my last semester, and hadn’t gone to school that day, so I didn’t know they’d gotten out early because of the news. We were in the middle of the game when a guy ran up to us and yelled out the story of alien invaders. We stopped and stared at him, then laughed. We laughed harder because he got all angry and serious. Finally, someone throws a ball at him and tells him to get off our court. We kept playing. Five minutes later, people start running around, yelling, crying, laughing. The news was spreading and it was getting crazy. I decided to head home and see my mom.
It was just her and me. I never had any brothers and sisters, and I’m not sure where my dad got to. I got home, and my mom had just beaten me there. She worked as a secretary at one of the law firms downtown, not too far from us. She ran over and hugged me. That’s when I realized something wasn’t right. Don’t get me wrong; my mom is a loving woman, but not overly affectionate. More of an “I love you, so don’t make me give you smack” kinda love. Anyway, she gave me a bear hug and kept saying, “Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus.”
She told me about the aliens. Then we watched the news. We watched for about an hour, then saw the bombs drop in all those cities. Man, I was scared. Scared like I’ve never been before, and that’s saying something, growing up near the projects in Memphis. I could handle that kind of danger, but this was something… alien. No pun intended. All these crazy thoughts started going through my head. Were they small? Did they have big heads? Were they going to do things to me? (Laughs.)
We stayed inside the rest of the night, just watching the news. We knew Memphis didn’t get hit by the aliens because we were alive. However, we didn’t know what happened to other cities because we never saw explosions. There was a lot of speculation about what the bombs meant. Different experts told different stories. At that point, we still didn’t know about the sound weapon.
The next day was much the same. We locked the door, ate, and watched the news. They told us to stay inside. We did. We thought we might be safe from them, that we might be okay. We were wrong.
At first, the gunfire didn’t bother us. I mean, that was a typical day for us. You’d hear a pop at least once a day from somewhere, but then it was two, then three, and well, you get the picture. By the second day, guns were going off all over the place.
Sometime on the second night, a man came to our door and asked my mother for help. There was a pregnant woman on another floor, and she was having some kind of problems. Mom looked back at me, then nodded and took off. The messenger, a buddy of mine, watched her leave and gave me a big old smile. I laughed, wrote out a short letter telling my mom I was with a friend, and then took off as well.
Me and my friend Nate went down to street level and worked our way through the projects. We already knew the safest routes, but even those were dicey. I remember thinking halfway there that maybe this wasn’t the best idea, but I couldn’t back out in front of my buddy. I should have.
We made it close to downtown, on the outskirts of midtown, when things got bad. A mob had formed—a big one. The crowd was walking down the middle of the street. Maybe a thousand or so, I’m not sure. They had guns. A lot of them. They weren’t walking fast or anything, mostly looting and drinking.
Nate and I backed up into a store that had already been burglarized. We didn’t want any trouble like that. Sure enough, not ten minutes later, the police showed up with their sirens leading the way. They didn’t even get out of the cars before they were shot. Hundreds of shots. Those police officers didn’t have a chance. That’s really what started the battle for Memphis, as it’s called now.
The mob that we were hiding from – there were dozens of those across the city – started burning the police cars with the officers still inside. By this time, the police had begun to show up in force a bit down the street. They didn’t move in, not yet, but they gathered. An hour later, they moved forward, their riot shields in a straight line. It didn’t help.