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INTRUSION: 1995

THERE WILL BE NO AWAKENING

The sleeping woue sense of unease and the unshakable feeling that so her Her anxiety will fade in less than a day and will soon be forgotten

The er

In her drea at her through the glass with huge, white-rimmed eyes

She will not awaken Neither will her husband beside her The shadow falling over them will not disturb their sleep And what the shadow has co The intrusion breaks no skin, violates not a single cell of her or the baby’s body

It is over in less than a minute The shadoithdraws

Now it is only the man, the woman, the baby inside her, and the intruder inside the baby, sleeping

The wo, the baby a few months later when he is born

The intruder inside him will sleep on and not wake for several years, when the unease of the child’ssince faded

Five years later, at a visit to the zoo with her child, the wo the owl is unsettling for reasons she cannot understand

She is not the first to dream of owls in the dark

She will not be the last

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ALIENS ARE STUPID

I’ about real aliens The Others aren’t stupid The Others are so far ahead of us, it’s like co No contest

No, I’ about the aliens inside our own heads

The ones weup since we realized those glittering lights in the sky were suns like ours and probably had planets like ours spinning around theine, the kind of aliens we’d like to attack us, human aliens You’ve seen them asaucers to level New York and Tokyo and London, or they eaway, and always, always, huether to defeat the alien horde David slays Goliath, and everybody (except Goliath) goes home happy

What crap

It’s like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it

There’s no way to know for sure, but I bet the Others knew about the huht it was funny as hell They hed their asses off If they have a sense of huh when a dog does so totally cute and dorky Oh, those cute, dorky humans! They think we think like they do! Isn’t that adorable?

Forget about flying saucers and little green et about epic battles with tanks and fighter jets and the final victory of us scrappy, unbroken, intrepid hu-eyed swar planet was fro one

The truth is, once they found us, ere toast

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SOMETIMES I THINK I ht be the last human on Earth

Which means I’m the last human in the universe

I know that’s dumb They can’t have killed everyone…yet I see how it could happen, though, eventually And then I think that’s exactly what the Others want me to see

Remember the dinosaurs? Well

So I’m probably not the last human on Earth, but I’m one of the last Totally alone--and likely to stay that way--until the 4th Wave rolls over ht thoughts You know, the three-in-the-hts When I curl into a little ball, so scared I can’t closein fear so intense I have to re When ins to skip like a scratched CD Alone, alone, alone, Cassie, you’re alone