The Nightmare Chronicles.

Chapter One

The Day Everything Changed

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Anthony Salaria, and this is my story.

I used to think the world was a big place.

Now I know better.

The world is only as big as the distance between you and whatever is trying to kill you.

Before all of this happened, I lived in a small town that most people had probably never heard of. It wasn't the kind of place that appeared on television unless somebody's high school football team made it to the state championship or a tractor-trailer overturned on the highway.

We were close enough to the airport that planes flew over our house every day. Sometimes they were so low that you could hear the engines rumbling through the walls.

Nobody paid much attention to them anymore.

That was normal.

That Saturday had started normally too.

It was a warm, peaceful day, and my family was having a reunion at my house. Calling it a house was being generous. It was a small double-wide trailer sitting on a patch of land surrounded by trees, old fencing, and a backyard that desperately needed mowing.

But it was home.

There were people everywhere.

My mother was inside talking with Aunt Jessica. My uncles were arguing about something they had probably argued about a hundred times before. My brothers, Justin and Gary, were outside with Sean, laughing and carrying on like idiots.

Katrina, my girlfriend, was sitting beside me.

For a few hours, nothing seemed wrong with the world.

People laughed.

Children played.

Someone had music playing from a cheap speaker on the porch.

The smell of grilled meat drifted through the yard.

It was just another family reunion.

Then I looked up.

A plane was flying overhead.

That wasn't unusual.

What was unusual was the size of it.

I had lived near the airport long enough to know what commercial aircraft looked like. I knew the different sounds their engines made. I could tell when something was a passenger plane and when it was a cargo aircraft.

This wasn't either.

It was enormous.

It looked more like a flying building than an airplane.

It was dark gray, almost black, with no markings that I could see. It was flying far lower than anything that size should have been flying over our neighborhood.

The engines didn't sound right either.

Instead of the familiar roar of a commercial jet, there was a deep, vibrating hum that seemed to shake the air itself.

Everyone stopped talking.

"What the hell is that?" Sean asked.

Nobody answered.

We all watched as the aircraft passed over us.

Then something fell from it.

At first, I thought it was cargo.

Then I realized it was falling directly toward us.

"Move!" somebody screamed.

The container slammed into the ground less than thirty feet from the house.

The impact shook the trailer.

Windows rattled.

The ground beneath my feet seemed to jump.

For a second, I thought we were under attack by a foreign nation.

Then there was silence.

Smoke-or dust-hung over the backyard.

I could hear the alarm on someone's car going off.

"What was that?" my mother asked.

Nobody knew.

The object sitting in our backyard looked like some kind of container, but it wasn't anything I had ever seen before.

It was roughly the size of a small car, made from some kind of dull metal that seemed almost black beneath the sunlight.

There were no doors.

No handles.

No markings.

No company logo.

No numbers.

Nothing.

Only a long crack running across one side.

"Don't go near it," Uncle Terence said.

Of course, we went near it.

Looking back, that was probably the first mistake.

We approached slowly.

The closer we got, the stranger the container looked. Parts of it had been crushed inward from the impact. Something inside was making a faint clicking noise.

Click.

Click.

Click.

"What is that?" Katrina whispered.

Then the crack widened.

Something crawled out.

At first, I thought they were insects.

They looked like locusts, but they were larger. Their bodies were dark and segmented, and their wings were almost transparent.

But the strangest part was their tails.

They glowed.

Not yellow like a firefly.

Green.

Bright green.

The glow pulsed through their bodies like something alive was moving inside them.

One crawled across the side of the container.

Then another.

Then ten.

Then hundreds.

Then thousands.

The crack seemed to become a living hole.

They poured out of it.

"Run!" somebody screamed.

We turned.

We were too late.

The swarm moved faster than anything that size should have been able to move.

They didn't fly randomly.

They moved together.

Like a single creature.

The first person they reached was my friend Kerry.

I'll never forget the sound he made.

The insects covered him.

He slapped at them, screaming and trying to run, but they clung to his skin.

Then his screaming changed.

His skin began peeling away.

Not burning.

Not cutting.

Peeling.

I watched in horror as the insects stripped the flesh from his arms.

Then his chest.

Then his face.

I could see muscle beneath his skin.

Then bone.

Blood poured from his eyes, ears, and nose.

He fell to his knees.

Nobody moved.

Nobody could.

The world seemed to stop.

I couldn't hear the screaming anymore.

I couldn't hear the people around me.

All I could see was Kerry.

And those horrible green lights.

My Aunt Jessica finally snapped me out of it.

"Anthony!"

I didn't move.

"Anthony, hurry into the house!"

My legs wouldn't work.

I was frozen.

I don't know whether it was shock or sheer terror.

Maybe both.

Then she screamed again.

"ANTHONY! HURRY!"

I finally snapped out of my daze and ran.

I slammed through the back door just as the swarm reached the porch.

Everyone scrambled backward.

Someone locked the door.

Someone else pulled the curtains shut.

For several seconds, nobody said anything.

We were all breathing heavily.

I looked around the room.

Half of the people were crying.

The other half were terrified, clutching Bibles with shaking hands.

Nobody knew what was happening.

I stared at the wall.

I knew I would remember what I had seen for the rest of my life.

If I lived that long.

It seemed like days passed before anyone spoke.

Finally, my Uncle Terence broke the silence.

"What were those things?"

"Locusts?" my mom proposed weakly.

"No," Cousin John answered. "They were no locusts like I've ever seen."

"Then what were they?" Mom asked.

Nobody answered.

A few minutes passed.

Then someone asked the question everyone was thinking.

"Are they still out there?"

Nobody wanted to look.

Finally, Uncle Terence stepped toward the door.

"I'll look."

"Don't!" somebody shouted.

He ignored them.

He slowly opened the curtain.

Then the screen door.

The swarm was still there.

Thousands of them covered the porch.

Millions seemed to fill the yard.

The trees were moving beneath them.

The grass was barely visible.

The entire backyard seemed to glow green.

Terence slammed the door shut.

"We cannot just sit here and wait for them to get in!"

Nobody responded.

"If we stay here," he continued, "in days-maybe weeks-we'll run out of food."

He was right.

There were at least ten of us in a three-bedroom house.

We had food, but not enough for everyone to survive indefinitely.

And there was another problem.

The insects weren't the only strange thing.

The television was still on.

A local news station was showing footage of sunny weather from somewhere else in the state.

No emergency warnings.

No reports of an airplane.

No reports of an explosion.

Nothing.

We tried calling 911.

No answer.

We tried calling the airport.

Nothing.

We tried our families.

Nothing.

Every phone seemed to work, but nobody was answering.

It was as if the entire outside world had gone silent.

Katrina was crying in my arms.

"Make them go away," she whispered.

I wanted to.

God, I wanted to.

I wished I could wave my hands and make everything go back to normal.

But I couldn't.

I was just a man.

Just as helpless as everyone else.

"It's getting dark outside," Aunt Jessica said.

Nobody answered.

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm trying to think."

I looked around the room.

Everyone was waiting for me to have an answer.

That scared me more than anything.

"With all that is going wrong, it feels like a dream," I said. "A horrible nightmare. I should wake up any minute now in my bed, screaming and covered in sweat."

I looked toward the back door.

"But this isn't a dream."

My voice became quieter.

"This is real life. And I can't wake up from real life, no matter how badly some of us want to."

"Maybe we should sleep in shifts," Jessica said. "Make sure they don't get inside."

"I'm more worried about us getting out," Sean said.

Everyone looked at him.

"We cannot just sit here waiting to be eaten alive. Those things can get in through windows, vents, the roof-who knows how many ways."

"Let's board up the house as much as we can," I said.

"No. I say we make a run for it."

Sean pointed toward the front window.

"All we have to do is make it to the cars. They're not even twenty-five feet away. We can make that."

"Yeah," I said, "and put everyone else in the house at risk? I don't think so."

"So what? We wait until those things eat through the walls?"

"We're safe here."

Sean stared at me.

"Fine. We'll do it your way."

He walked away, muttering under his breath.

I looked at my brothers.

"Justin, Gary, Sean-help me remove all the closet doors."

They looked confused.

"It'll help brace the windows. If they break through the glass, the wood should hold."

Nobody argued.

We started working.

Then Katrina screamed.

"Look!"

Everyone turned.

She was pointing toward the backyard.

"It's Kerry."

My stomach dropped.

"I thought you said he was dead."

"He is!" I shouted.

"Well then," she whispered, "how is he banging on the window?"

We all looked.

Something was standing outside.

It was Kerry.

Or what was left of him.

He was covered in blood.

His clothing hung from his body in strips.

One eye was completely gone.

His skin was covered in bite marks.

And yet he was standing.

He raised his hand.

Then he hit the glass.

Bang.

Everyone stepped backward.

Bang.

Again.

"Kerry?" someone whispered.

I couldn't answer.

"The dead don't just stand up and start walking," I said.

"Maybe he's not dead," Katrina said.

"Yes, he is."

I pointed toward the window.

"Look at his eye."

Katrina covered her mouth.

"It's completely missing."

Kerry slammed against the glass again.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

"It's like he's a zombie," I said.

"Yeah, okay, a zombie," Katrina snapped. "Anthony, zombies aren't real!"

I looked around the room.

"Look around!"

I pointed toward the window.

"Does any of this look sane?"

Nobody spoke.

Sean stepped forward.

"See? We should make a run for the cars before more show up."

I hated to admit it.

But he was right.

"I hate to say this," I said, "but I agree with Sean."

Everyone stared at me.

"Katrina, we should try to make a move before more show up."

I thought for a moment.

"Here's what we'll do. We'll board up tonight. We'll sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning, we'll make a move for it."

Nobody looked happy about it.

But everyone agreed.

"We'll sleep in shifts," I continued. "Three men and two women will stand guard while the rest sleep. If anything happens, wake everyone up."

I looked at the people around me.

"Nobody opens a door. Nobody goes outside. Nobody does anything alone."

Everyone nodded.

"Okay," I said. "I'll sleep while y'all stand guard."

Katrina and I lay down together.

She moved in close to me, still shaking.

I wrapped my arms around her.

Outside, the insects continued to glow.

Through the walls, I could hear them.

Thousands of tiny wings.

A constant buzzing.

Like the whole night was breathing.

I closed my eyes.

And then I heard something.

Far above us.

An airplane.

I opened my eyes.

The sound grew louder.

Then came a second sound.

A third.

Then dozens.

I sat up.

"Katrina."

She looked at me.

"What?"

I listened.

The planes weren't flying toward the airport.

They were flying toward us.

And somewhere in the darkness above the trees, something enormous passed across the moon.

For the first time that night, I realized something.

The airplane hadn't accidentally dropped that container.

It had delivered it.

And whatever was happening to our town...

had only just begun.