No one remembers when the first one appeared. Mr. Fletcher thinks it's some high school kids just playing a prank, but it is too big for kids to have put there. My best friend, Tommy, says old man Harper is just crazy enough to do it but I don't think so. No one wants to say it, but everyone is thinking it's just like something out of The Twilight Zone.
Aliens are here.
Although it's not gonna be the little green men kind cuz these are no flying saucers. No, this is more like a big ol' can of chili beans lying on its side in the middle of the Westler's back forty. Then, before you can even wrap your head about the one being there, another pops up overnight not three hundred yards from the first one. Then another one this past Tuesday. Then another one yesterday.
Pretty soon you can't swivel your head in any direction without seeing one. You go to bed whispering your prayers while scratching your head a wondering just where the heck they are coming from and crossing your fingers that there won't be more in the morning.
But then you wake up, peak out your kitchen window and there they sit, staring back like a pack of coyotes hungering for their first meal in a long time and you are topping the snack list.
And just when you think nothing can get any weirder, the humming starts up. I was headed over to Tommy's house to do our homework before checking out the latest additions to "pod pack" as we like to call those things, when all of a sudden I can hear it.
Low at first, the humming is just loud enough to catch my attention and I turn in all directions, wondering where the strange sound is coming from. Then I realize it is coming from the hundreds of mounds spread out for miles across the countryside. Louder and louder the humming grows until I even begin to make out distinctive tones within the sounds...like each pod is calling out to its neighbor and all of them are counting down to something.
But what????
