Addy’s Story (IP) - PART I – The Silence

My name is Addy Taylor and I’m a survivor of the Siren invasion.

I remember that I’d gone out with my young niece, Charlotte, onto the porch to listen to the cicada’s singing. It was a really hot summer, I remember, and it had been a really hot night the night before so I hadn’t had a great deal of sleep.

The TV hadn’t been on so we didn’t even know about the ships landing until one of our neighbours, Mrs Cumming was rushing by on her way home from the diner where she works as a waitress .

She seemed really frantic, I remember, telling me I should switch on the TV, saying that Aliens had landed in Washington.

Well, at first I had no idea whether she was being serious or if she hadn’t gone a little crazy but then I started to notice that there seemed to be a lot of commotion up and down my street.

There were crowds of people gathering out on the sidewalk like they were having some kind of a neighbourhood meeting and so I left my niece out on the porch talking to Mrs Cummings and I went inside to switch on the TV and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the news, like something out of an old Hollywood movie, a big flying saucer had landed on Theodore Roosevelt Island near the Whitehouse and it was surrounded by a big military cordon of hundreds of uniformed men and armoured vehicles.

They said that similar spacecraft had landed in cities all around the world.

I didn’t know what to think at first; whether to be afraid or happy or what. Then my niece came in from the porch and she told me that a policeman had told her to stay indoors and watch the TV because she said he’d said something unexpected might happen and they, the police I mean, were afraid that there might be chaos or looting or something like that.

I remember then that my niece saw the pictures on TV and she asked me, “What is it, Aunt Addy? Whats happening?”.

“It’s a flying saucer, just like Mrs Cummings said”, I told her, “They’ve landed all over the world. In London and Paris and everywhere”.

“What do they want?”, Charlotte asked then “Are they going to attack us?”.

I told her that I didn’t know but that she shouldn’t be afraid; that we would survive somehow, whatever happened. I promised her that I would always protect her and, I remember, saying a prayer in my head ,asking God to protect us both.

Then I got a call from my sister Karen in Albany, Charlotte’s mother, asking me if Charlotte was alright. You see, Charlotte had been staying with me as a kind of Summer vacation.
I asked her if she wanted me to bring Charlotte home but her husband Ted said that Charlotte was probably safer staying put.

“Travelling could be dangerous right now. You never know what those aliens are going to do next. You may not even be able to get a train or a flight. All the transport networks might be disrupted”, he said.

Karen, my sister, agreed with him although she seemed, understandably, quite jittery and she was sobbing a lot. Then I put Charlotte on the phone to speak to her mom and dad and I went back to check the TV.

Almost all the channels were showing the same thing. I guess the whole world must have been watching the same thing. A strange silent, saucer shaped object, not moving or opening but just sitting there for hours in eery silence like some kind of crazy egg waiting to hatch.

Then Charlotte told me that her mother wanted to speak to me again and Karen made me swear to God that I would protect her daughter and take proper care of her no matter what and, after this oath, my sister seemed a bit less frantic. She said that she trusted me and that she loved me and I told her that I loved her and I even started crying too. That’s when the phone went dead and the music of the Sirens began.