I woke up to an emergency alert at 6 a.m. this morning on my phone. Checking my phone, the alert read “Go indoors immediately and remain inside. Await further instructions.”. After living here for almost 10 years I’ve only ever received a handful of emergency alerts which all presented themselves as tests for the emergency alert system. Generally, I live my life pretty freely and don’t take life too seriously. Unfortunately for me, this means I’m not the type of person who prepares for the worst to happen which I now realise is what I should have been doing.

I thought to myself “better safe than sorry” so after getting out of bed, I immediately headed downstairs and checked that both the front and back doors were locked and deadbolted. I live alone and always lock my doors at night, but I needed to verify this simply for sanity’s sake, even if I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I live in a decently sized two-story house that I’ve worked my ass off to make a reality, the windows downstairs all have solid security screens on them meaning there was no need for me to check the locks on those. After securing the house I went back upstairs to my bedroom and tried to make a couple of calls. Initially I called my boss, I couldn’t just expect to get the day off work without explaining the situation, if there even was a situation. The phone rang for some time before directing me to her voicemail system. I left a message explaining the emergency alert I received and told her to call me back when she gets the chance so we can discuss what’s happened. I tried calling my parents but was again sent straight to their voicemail system. I think at this point was when I was starting to get worried. My parents live almost 2 hours away from me and were always awake at the ass crack of dawn, they never left the house before 8 a.m. but I still tried to convince myself they were busy with something else. So again I left a message for them to get back to me when they could.

My phone dinged. A message from one of my work colleagues, John. He was asking whether I had received the emergency alert too and if I knew anything about why it was sent out. I replied immediately and told him I didn’t know anymore than he did but I’d let him know if I found anything out. I needed to calm down now, there was no use worrying over something yet that I didn’t even know about. I decided to shower first before having a quick breakfast and turning on the television to get my mind off of whatever could be going on.

At this point it was about 7:30 a.m., the time I would usually be leaving for work. I’m not one to purposely ignore warning signs so I’d rather get an angry text from my boss than get caught up in whatever caused the emergency alert to be sent in the first place. When I turned the television on, the same emergency alert sound invaded my ears. The volume was so high from the music I was listening to last night I had to dive for the remote to turn it down. The same words that my phone woke me up to were the only words on the screen, “Go indoors immediately and remain inside. Await further instructions.”. Now I was extremely worried. I was realising this couldn’t just be an accident or a test. I’d never seen an emergency warning like this, let alone it being presented on every channel I flicked through. Without any additional information, there was no way for me to know what was going on or how to prepare for it. After turning the volume from the television all the way down, to get a break from that blaring alert sound, I realised how quiet it was outside. No cars commuting, birds chirping, neighbours chatting, or airplanes flying overhead, nothing. I never realised how accustomed I had become to these background sounds. This lack of background sound made me feel incredibly uneasy, like I could sense something was wrong regardless of the emergency alerts.

All of my blinds were still shut so I hadn’t had a chance or even thought about looking outside until this point. There wasn’t any specific instructions regarding looking outside anyways so I didn’t really think anything of it, but I thought it would be safest to look outside my bedroom window which leads out to a small balcony through a sliding glass door. I went into my room and pulled on the string that rotates the vertical blinds. Immediately my room flooded with natural light and the warmth of the sun hit me. I’ve always loved the warmth of direct sunlight, so I made sure my window was faced towards the sunrise and subsequently towards the street when I had the house built. However, after opening the blinds, what I saw made me immediately drop to the floor, out of sight from the street.

I barely got a glimpse of them, but they looked extremely hostile. These creatures were nothing like any animal I’ve ever seen and were gathered in a circle in front of the house across from mine, it looked like there were about eight of them. They were gaunt and tall, and appeared as though they were wearing a suit of skin that was far too tight for their body, their bones seemed to be almost protruding from their skin. They had no facial features besides a pair of dark sunken eyes that appeared completely white in contrast with their extremely dark skin. These things were far from human but were standing on two legs like us. I’m glad they didn’t see me, if they can see at all that is. I don’t think I would be writing this right now if they had seen me.

After dropping to the floor, I immediately closed the blinds again. I’ve never had a panic attack before now, but now realising the actual danger I was in, it sure felt like I was going through something similar. Nothing that was going on was normal. Without confidence I dialled the emergency telephone number on my phone, immediately a recorded message sounded through the speaker, “Go indoors immediately and remain inside. Await further instructions.”. This message pierced my ears and continued looping until I ended the call.

A couple of hours passed by while I went through my entire phone list trying to get into contact with anyone I possibly could. Now even John wouldn’t respond. Not a single person answered their phone or responded to the frantic voicemails I left. At the moment I was safe in my house, but how long would that last. I didn’t even know what these creatures were let alone what they were capable of. I just knew they weren’t here to make friends.

Eventually, I decided to make my way downstairs and take stock of the food I had. I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait these creatures out, but the power is still working at the moment so everything in the fridge and freezer is still okay. The water is still running obviously since I was able to take a shower, but again, I don’t know how long that will last. I decided to fill up the bathtub in the downstairs bathroom in case the water stops running anytime soon, so I’ll have at least 150 litres of drinkable water in that case.

Curiosity got the better of me. After taking stock of the food and filling the tub I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was already going a little mad. Just yesterday everything had been completely fine. Now I couldn’t get in touch with a single person and there were creatures out on the street I’d never seen before. I needed to look again. I needed to know that what I saw was real and not something I’d made up in my head. This all felt like a weird dream I needed to wake up from, but I knew this was real.

I went back upstairs to my bedroom and peaked through the blinds. Surprisingly, the creatures were no longer where I had seen them earlier. I then noticed the door to the house across the street looked to have been scratched through, there were long scratch marks along the length of the wooden door and large hole in the centre. They’d broken their way into that house, but they were no longer anywhere to be seen. That is until I noticed something staring straight back at me through the upstairs window of that same house. The deep sunken eyes I stared into seemed like they’d steal the soul from my body if I looked for too long. After my brain recognised what I was staring at, I leapt backwards away from the blinds. That thing had no doubt seen me. I paced back and forth thinking of what I should do at this point when I heard a horrendous sound coming from downstairs. I quietly made my way down the stairs and towards the sound. The sound pierced my ears, it sounded like something sharp being dragged across metal. That’s when I realised, they were trying to get inside. The metal security screen door I had installed was being barraged by them.

I started moving the bookcases I had by the entrance against the front door. Now, the sun was setting, and they were mercilessly going at it. There was no way I could fend off those things barehanded. That’s when I remembered the gift my dad had given me this year for my 25th birthday. I was never really into guns and never really had a need to use one, but at a time like this, it was quite necessary if it had to come to that. I ran back upstairs and into the guest room where I’d stored everything that was gifted to me for my birthday this year. The pistol was still in its case and I quickly removed it and loaded it with the ammunition my dad had shown me how to use. I have never fired a gun, so this still remains a last resort.

Now I’m sitting in my room writing this, the pistol is sitting on my bedside table and I can still hear those creatures downstairs. I don’t know exactly what I should do. Should I run? or should I fight? If you’re reading this, please respond.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5