Jimmy banged on the cab so hard it woke Matt from a deep sleep.
"Would you tell him to stop?" Jason yelled.
Brett opened the sliding glass window. "Jimmy, stop pounding. You're waking everyone up."
Jimmy leaned down and stuck his narrow head through the window. "We're here and it doesn't look like we're alone. Lights are flashing down there," he whispered.
Matt peered out the front window and saw a cluster of trees covered in snow. A light glow bounced against the trunks. It seemed they'd slept the entire day as the sun had already set. He had no idea how long they had been on the dirt road, but every muscle in his body ached.
"We'll be at the top of the canyon in a few minutes. Should give us a bird's eye view of the area," Jason said. "So, sit down and relax, Jimmy."
Jimmy Boy retreated to the bed. However, he didn't sit. He opened his case again and clicked a plastic block of something to the scope of his rifle.
"What's that?" Matt pointed at Jimmy.
Brett urged his body higher and looked out the back. "That's his night vision. He's strapped it to a semi-automatic AR-17 assault rifle."
"Didn't the government ban those types of rifles?" Matt thought he'd heard it on a morning talk show.
Jason smiled. "Not yet. And if they do, they'll have to pry those weapons out of Jimmy's cold, dead, hands."
Katelyn sat up from her position in Brett's lap. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," Brett said. "We're near the top of the mountain. Are you feeling better?" He kissed her forehead.
"How near?" She rubbed her eyes and looked at Matt. Then her eyes fell on Eve, who hadn't woken up, using Matt's shoulder as a pillow. "What time is it?"
Matt looked at his watch. "Five-thirty."
"We've been gone a long time."
Nancy stretched and yawned, which made Matt, Katelyn, and Brett yawn. "We told you the drive would take a while."
Jason humphed. "Especially taking these back roads up the mountain. I've had to stop and backtrack a couple of times.
The truck leveled out as the top of the canyon road flattened. The tree line blocked Matt's view of the ravine.
"Holy shit!" Jason yelled.
"Oh ... my ... God!" Nancy crawled over the seat and hid on the floor.
Matt unbuckled his seat belt and woke up Eve. He moved her to the side, straining to get a glimpse of what had spooked the other three. "What is it? Plane crash? Was Jason ... right?"
Nancy kept hidden. Jason stopped the truck at the edge of the precipice. His eyes bulged, and his body shook.
Jimmy Boy leaped from the bed of the truck and landed on the ground with a clanking of metal. He'd changed into a camouflage suit and flack vest lined with bullets. A large assault rifle swung from his back. He had an even larger rifle, with an infrared scope, clasped in his hands. A buck knife jutted from a sheath on his belt. He tapped on the front passenger window.
Dustin rolled it down.
"Turn off your lights. They'll spot us," Jimmy Boy whispered.
Jason turned off the truck and shut off the lights.
"What's down there?" Katelyn asked.
"Aliens." Jimmy Boy shook his head. "Mother fucking aliens."
"You've gotta be shitting me." Brett opened his door and hopped out of the truck, joining Jimmy Boy by the grill. They shared his binoculars, looking at something down the hill.
Katelyn got out and joined them.
Matt opened his door. His heart beat rampantly and he almost didn't want to know what Jimmy Boy had fixated on.
Eve pushed him out the door. "Let's check it out." She nearly knocked him over when she exited the truck.
Matt sighed. "Okay."
Eve grabbed him by the hand and led him to the front of the truck. In the distance, at the other side of the canyon, the butt end of a vehicle poked from a grove of smashed pine trees. Lights flashed and lit up the area around it.
"What the hell is it?" Eve said.
"A ship." Jimmy Boy shared his binoculars with Katelyn.
Katelyn said in a frightened and hurried voice, "Check out the back ..." She gulped. "... it's opening."
Jimmy Boy took the binoculars back. "Let me ... holy hell, she ain't joking. The damn thing is opening up."
Matt still couldn't believe his eyes. Was he witnessing a downed alien spacecraft? Were they about to have their close encounter of the fourth kind? A light from inside grew brighter as a door opened near the back or possibly the front, he couldn't tell which.
"Take this." Jimmy Boy handed Matt a 9mm pistol. He opened a bag and gave a shotgun to Jason, and another rifle to Brett. Dustin also got a .35 caliber pistol. "We can't make any mistakes here. If these aliens are hostile, we need to be ready. Everyone got that?"
They all nodded.
"Those can't be aliens," Brett said. "Has to be a new shuttle or some shit N.A.S.A's testing and the damn thing crashed. Easy enough. We should call and get some army guys up here or something."
Katelyn pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.
"No use, Kitty. I already tried." Nancy held her phone up with empty bars in the upper left-hand corner.
"Can you hear me now? My ass," Katelyn said. "Now what?"
Jimmy Boy handed the binoculars to Matt. "Looks like they're dropping a ramp of some sort."
Matt took the binoculars and looked down the ravine. Everything had a bright green tint and when the lights from the ship flashed, it became a total whiteout. He did agree that a ramp had extended from the ship, but he didn't see anyone on their way out.
Jimmy Boy turned the safety off on Matt's gun. "You can't shoot anything with that on now, can ya?"
"Probably not." Matt hadn't shot a lot of guns, though, he had gone to the range with his dad a couple of times. He remembered hitting the bullseye once out of about twenty tries.
Jimmy Boy quirked his right cheek into a half smile. "I'm headed down the hill a bit. Need a better place to spot from. But I need someone to approach the ship. Any volunteers?"
"We're up." Jason punched Brett in the arm.
"I got your back."
"Are you two insane?" Nancy pushed Jason's chest. "Don't leave us up here without a weapon."
"That's my girl," Jason said. "Jimmy? Got a gun for Nancy?"
"7mm rifle in the back of the truck. I left the case open. Can you shoot?"
Nancy smiled and crawled into the bed. "Locked and loaded." She perched on the roof of the truck. Dustin joined her.
Jason smiled. "That's my girl. She can shoot better than most of us put together."
"You guys hold the fort down," Jimmy Boy said.
"I'm going with you." Katelyn wrapped her arms around Brett's left arm.
Twigs snapped and shrubs rustled as the armed group headed down the hillside.
Matt kept the binoculars. "Wait, guys."
"They're already down the ravine," Eve said. She then gently took the gun from Matt, popped the clip out, inspected it, and slapped it back into the butt of the gun.
Matt didn't care. Eve had probably used guns way more than he had. But as he watched the ship and the group moving down the hill, he saw a shadow. An ominous group of human shadows spread down the ramp.
"They're not aliens." Matt handed the binoculars to Eve.
"No?" She re-focused the goggles. "They're exiting the ship. And they're ... people, Matt. We need to stop the others from opening fire on them."
"Come on." Matt took the binoculars and hung them around his neck. He snagged Eve's hand and dragged her behind him. They skidded down the snow-covered hill, into the depths of the canyon, to hopefully prevent a massacre.
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