Copperback
Authors: Tarah R. Hamilton
Copperback
By
Tarah R. Hamilton
Text
copyright © 2013 Tarah R. Hamilton
Cover art
copyright © 2013 Aaron Wood
All Rights Reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictitious. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Some
moments in life have such an impact, they’re hard to forget. It’s like you’re
back in that place all over again and can remember every detail in perfect
clarity; the moment almost plays in slow motion, never allowing you to let go
of it.
One
of those moments happened to me when I was fifteen. It was April 16
th
.
I was in high school, and like any girl my age, I was still a child learning
about hormones, talking about boys, and trying to figure out what I was going
to wear to the school dance on Friday. The last thing I had on my mind was how
that day would begin to change my life – everyone’s lives – forever.
The
day started like any other ordinary school day: morning announcements followed
by English. After first period was over, our class broke up, and students
cascaded through the door to various hallways leading to bright futures and
utter failures. Science was my second class, and I never looked forward to it.
Even
if nothing had ever happened that day or any other, I would still remember Mr.
Hen, the science teacher. His last name was actually Henshaw, but all of us
referred to him as Mr. Hen when out of earshot. The nickname was just so
fitting to his appearance: He looked like a chicken with glasses and was a
short, pudgy man – pudgy only referring to his over-hanging middle. His short,
skinny legs could barely hold his weight, and he wore dirty red suspenders overworn
from years of use. He even had a crown like a chicken. He was mostly bald, but
had a crescent of hair around the back of his head, and a little tuft on top
that had a tendency of standing up straight whenever he was flustered.
The
last few weeks he had been rambling on about a meteor shower we should be able
to see in the next few days. Because of this “event,” he had us study meteors: where
they come from; what they are made of; what the difference is between
meteoroids and asteroids. It was a real shocker. Two months before, he had us
study earthquakes, since there had been one that had devastated China, killing
hundreds. Before that, it was being able to see Mars in whatever sky, and so
on. I could never wrap my brain around it. The only thing interesting in class
was waiting to see if Mr. Hen would get so excited that he would tuck his arms
under his pits and start pecking the floor.
That
day was different. A sense of something amiss hung heavy in the air when I
walked into the classroom. What sound was coming from the hallway, full of
chit-chat and locker doors slamming, was sucked out of the air with the eerie
silence of the room. The students from the previous class hadn’t yet left the
room to go to their next subject. In fact, they were still seated at their
desks. Everyone’s eyes seemed glued to whatever was going on at the front of
the room. Mr. Hen had a TV from the audio/visual department set up with the
news on. At the bottom of the screen, the ticker read “Breaking News –
Meteorite hits Wisconsin.” There were a bunch of out-of-focus images of people
standing around a field.
I
never meant for my comment to be heard aloud, but the deafening silence
prevented that from happening.
“Who
would think that a meteorite could be more interesting then cow tipping in Wisconsin?”
“Miss
O’Neil. Sit down and shut up!” said Mr. Hen without even taking his wide eyes
from the screen.
I
searched for an empty seat in the class, since a boy from the previous class
wasn’t showing any sign of getting up from my usual desk. Of course there were
none, since no one had left yet. The room was filling fast, so I tried to find
Jessica in the cramped space in the back of the room to see why my teacher had
thought it appropriate to tell me to “shut up!”
Jessica
had been my best friend since first grade. Every year we were in the same class
together. We always started off sitting next to each other, passing notes and
talking, but usually before school would even let out for Christmas break, we
would wind up on opposite sides of the room so we would stop disrupting
everyone. For high school, I believed that the teaching staff had a private
meeting and made sure to separate us before we started our trend.
It
didn’t make sense why there was such an interest in watching a news reel of
blurry people standing around where a meteorite fell. I was no expert at using
a camera of any sort and getting a clear image, but I also wasn’t doing it to
make a living.
I
started to whisper a question to Jessica. “How are we supposed to see anything
if–”
“They’re
naked! They’re all completely naked!” she shrieked, still staring at the screen
in shock.
“Jessica
and Emily, if you insist on talking, then take it outside of this class. We are
all trying to hear what they are saying,” said a flustered Mr. Hen. He looked
even more like a chicken when his face was red with anger.
Jessica
was right. Hundreds of naked men, women, and children were gathered where this
rock had hit, and the media was having an awful time trying to cover them up
with blurs. The camera was panning out to show the hundreds – no, thousands – standing
there. The further out they tried to show everyone, the harder it was to cover
them up with the fuzz. I still hadn’t even tried to hear what the reporter was
saying. I could only imagine that this rock had landed in the center of some
nudist colony in Wisconsin, and everyone had evacuated. Standing outside, in
April, with tans?
“It’s
a hoax. It has to be a hoax. Th-this can’t be ha-happening,” said a voice from the
doorway.
Miss
Pella from Math was now in the room, too. She apparently had heard about the bizarre
naked folks in Wisconsin and just had to see for herself. Her voice was as
shaky as the rest of her.
“I
don’t think so, Helen,” said our frazzled science teacher. There was a slight
note of panic in his voice, too. “There are too many of them to just show up in
one place like that. This is really happening.”
I
think Miss Pella ran from the room right about then, but I’m not quite sure. By
that time, I was too intent on the screen to notice much of anything else. The
image had finally zoomed in close enough on these nudists to be able to remove
the blurs from the bodies and the haze from my misunderstanding.
The
one they focused on looked like a human in almost every way. His face appeared
flawless in comparison to most. His eyes were distant and deep brown with a
hint of green sparkle to them. The nose and mouth were precisely proportioned
for his strong jaw line and slender face. Even his upper body, from what we
could see, looked like the muscular tone that could rival some male models I’d
seen in magazines. It was as if he had dropped out of a Hollywood film and
ended up on the news, but without the sex scandal.
Tawny
hair that seemed to ripple past his shoulders glimmered in the morning sun, reflecting
its radiance. It wasn’t a mullet, like what was fashionable with most men in
the area. As he turned away from the camera, I could see that, where the
hairline stopped for most men, his short hair continued down to the middle of
his shoulder blades, drawing to a point. The view from behind also showed that
he had dark brown spots or freckles that almost formed a pattern along either
side of his hair, tapering off where the smudged concealer began. These spots
were matched by the ones on the backs of his arms, which extended from the top
of his perfect triceps, flowing down along his arms, and fading away at the
elbow. He was definitely not from Wisconsin, or any other state.
The
woman next to him had the same impeccable features: long, slender frame covered
in tan, satin skin. The shimmer of green bounced off her hazel eyes when she
turned her head to look in the same direction the man had; her mane of thick
brunette hair ending further down than his, coming to a bristled point at the
small of her back.
When
they turned away from us, the news team must have lost interest in them and
moved on to another they could give face time to, this time to a young girl.
She had a paler shade of caramel-colored skin as the man, but her features were
just as stunning. Her hair was a sandy blonde covering the entire length of her
back, and her eyes two emeralds that reflected the same green glow. She looked
like she was about four years old. She didn’t appear frightened or to be
searching for a parent, and it was obvious that the others around her were not
paying her any attention. She was so calm. They all were.
No
one spoke, from what we could see. Not a single sound came from any of these
creatures. There were no looks of confusion, no shivers from the cool spring
breeze blowing at their hair, not a single hint of worry or fear to even
suggest that they were aware they were somewhere they didn’t belong. They all
seemed collected in thoughts and looked as if they were waiting for something.
Quickly,
the camera moved on to another and another. All of them, young and old, had the
same graceful features. Just like us, some skin shades were lighter or darker
than others. The variation of hair and eye colors couldn’t have been any more
human-like. The only things that were exactly the same from being to being were
the tranquility that surrounded them and the hint of jade glinting from their
eyes.
Except
for the constant drone of the reporter, the silence both in our room and on
that field was complete. I must have been holding my breath for a long time, as
I could hear it escape from my lungs in a rush, bringing my focus back to what
had been learned about them.
The
commentary from the young reporter wasn’t very helpful. You could feel his shattered
nerves in every word he spoke. As soon as he had managed to collect one thought
and share it with the world, he would start to ramble to himself, pause, and
attempt to start again. In light of current events, I was surprised he kept any
sense of composure. I was able to pull very little from the train wreck of a
report; the few words that stuck were: Vesper, Wisconsin, and extraterrestrials.
ET had just landed in a small cow town and brought a few thousand friends with
him. The thought entered my mind that this might really negatively impact what
I was going to be doing Friday night, or any night from here on out.
Within
an hour, most students and faculty alike had either panicked or had made the effort
to keep what sanity was left intact until they knew more. Classes were on
mandatory lock down, although that didn’t stop some teachers from fleeing the
building, searching for whatever solace they could find outside our institution.
Nervous breakdowns and emergency prayer groups erupted in almost every class,
as people feared that our final days were upon us. Every TV in the school was
tuned to any channel that possessed information about our new visitors. It
wasn’t long before parents started showing up to have kids pulled from
teacher-less classes and taken back to the safety of their own homes. I had no
problem staying inside and waiting it out. Eventually my mom would call the
school and demand they let me walk home on my own two feet, or she would
convince my brother to come pick me up. As it turned out, the latter happened,
and Chase showed up just in time to hear the creatures speak for the first
time.
Chase
was three years older than me, but I always felt those roles were reversed.
Living with him, I spent most of my time acting on behalf of our mom: making
sure he stayed out of trouble, and sometimes keeping her from knowing what kind
of trouble he was in. His low grades and lack of ambition made it impossible
for him to move on to even the most basic of community colleges after
graduation, and he fell into the same rut most guys without a scholarship do:
work for one of the many steel mills, or work on a farm. Chase chose the farm
life, since his cook and housekeeper could still take care of him at home, in
exchange for a few maintenance jobs here and there.
Two
hours since the meteor struck Earth, and the military had finally arrived,
fully armed and ready to protect our great country if necessary. Chase seemed
even more confused than I was, since he hadn’t had the liberty of watching the
television the entire time as events unfolded. By his reaction, he must have
been listening to a CD on his way over and still had no idea what had happened.
Mom must have forgotten to mention the exact nature of the early class
departure.
“Holy…”
Chase began to say. His sentence drifted off before he could get the final word
out. His jaw just hung there as he gazed in awe at the images on the screen,
above the words that now read, “Extraterrestrials Land in Vesper, WI.”
One
of the creatures – an older one, probably late fifties by Earth standards –slowly
moved forward, separating himself from the crowd. His face had all the grace of
any of them, but his age showed through his wrinkling brow and probably
once-jet-black hair, now distinguished by a spackling of grey and white. His
eyes were darker than most, but still hinted at a beryl glimmer like the rest.
A smile appeared on his face, displaying dazzling white teeth. It wasn’t
menacing or ill willed, but an honest smile, full of compassion. He barely took
a few steps forward before stopping and raising his hands, palms out, to show
everyone he meant no harm.
One
of the generals advanced to meet him partway, still surrounded by other troops
prepared to open fire if necessary. His stature, compared to the alien’s, was
much shorter. Even as cool as the morning air had to have been in Wisconsin,
beads of perspiration clung to the general’s forehead from the mounting fear
and anxiety of being the first one to make contact.