“I know what we need to do now! Mom, trust me, he said we will be okay!”

  “Josie, we can’t! What if we can’t get back!”

  “We can’t let them keep destroying each other!”

  “Josie! We need to go as a family!”

  “Goddamn Fearne! Get your ass in that pen!”

  Callie screamed, pushing on the back end of one of the three momma goats that decided being with the boy goats was better than eating their hay. This was the third time that week that at least two mommas had gotten out of their pen. Spring baby goats are cute and adorable, but mid-blizzard babies in the middle of winter are not. But the momma goats didn’t seem to understand that and were doing everything in their power to get with the boys.

  “FINALLY!” Eliza sighed, slamming the gate and latching it behind Fearne, “Can we go play now?”

  “Yes, thank you for your help,” Callie said, turning back towards the house, realizing the bread dough was still in the mixer. She had noticed Turbo, their male goat, going after Mabel, the other female that had gotten out this time, and had run outside calling for her girls to help. Hopefully, she turned off the mixer; otherwise, who knows what state the bread would be in.

  In exasperation, she looked off to the mountains that she loved so much. That view of the Rocky Mountains was a huge reason why Kane and she had chosen to homestead on that particular property despite the cactus and despite the wind. The military base just over the hill was active today; she could hear their usual *thump* *thunk* *rat-a-tat* of the practice firing and drills. Summer was always a little busier with the guardsman training. They didn’t have to compete with the thick snow or heavy rains like in the winter, so they had grown used to the extra noise and the subtle shaking of their house about two to three times a week.

  “Hopefully they don’t set anything on fire this time,” she thought out loud, unknowingly.

  “What did you say, Mom?” Josie asked from behind, but Callie didn’t even realize she was behind her.

  Startled, “Oh, nothing, I was just muttering to myself. Are you going to go play with your sister?”

  “‘No thank you, I want to go look at the mountains.”

  Of course she did. Josie’s favorite place to go after dealing with the mischievous goats was to the swing set to look out over the flowering cactus and the mountains to their north.

  Suddenly, the nearly cloudless sky flashed like the biggest lightning strike Callie had ever seen. It blocked out the mountains, and only the southern edge of Colorado Springs could be seen below the flash. In the split second it happened, the first thought that went through Callie’s mind was the old videos of the nuclear bomb tests where the mushroom cloud was on fire and blocked out the sky. But in the same second, that wasn’t what this was. It was way too big! It didn’t look like fire; that was a flash! The blue-white electrical look of lightning was what she saw. But it was too big! And there were no clouds. There should be clouds!

  “Eliza! Josie! Get in the house!” Callie yelled.

  A moment later, one of the strongest winds she had ever seen was coming over the farthest hill on their property. See? How can you see the wind? It looked like a tidal wave of dust, but it was moving way too fast!

  Josie rounded the corner of the house and headed straight towards the open front door with a look of fear in her eyes. And she was moving the fastest Callie had ever seen her, sometimes clumsy, daughter run. Eliza came running up from behind Callie and ran straight to the door, even in her haste, Callie sighed in relief that her recently defiant daughter had decided to listen. Since her twins hit their 10th birthday, they had been taking turns with their stubborn streaks, giving just a hint at what was in store for Callie when her girls hit their teens.

  Callie hit the front deck just as she heard and felt the wind hit the house. Shit! Are the windows shut? Callie thought as she locked the front door and then nearly tripped over Zeus, their Malinois. Eliza and Josie were already downstairs.

  “‘Eliza, Josie, check if the windows and doors are locked!” Callie called down the stairs and then quietly said to herself, “I don’t know how long this wind will last.” Callie went to check the kitchen and bedroom windows. Minutes later, both girls were in the living room, looking worried.

  “Mom, what was that light?” Eliza asked.

  “I don’t know, but let’s stay inside until your dad gets home,” Callie said as Eliza reached for a hug, and Josie quickly followed.

  “I hope Kane is okay,” Callie thought. Her husband was working in town that day; he was trying to get a couple more hours in at the office before taking a couple of weeks off while their friends were in town. It had been a couple of years since this group of friends had all been in one place. Since Kane decided to leave military service 15 years ago, it had been hard to get together with Phillip and Stern. Stern had stayed in and was finally retiring. Phillip only lasted one more round after Kane and had been out for 10 years, but despite Kane & Callie’s best effort, they hadn’t moved with them to Colorado.

  “Mom, can we watch TV?” Eliza asked, finally letting go of the hug. Josie had let go and was just standing, looking out the window at the windstorm.

  “Sure,” Callie said as she reached for Josie to break her out of her trance, “Josie, do you want to watch TV?”

  “Something is out there,” Josie whispered, still looking out the window.

  “What do you mean? Josie, are you okay?” Callie asked, touching her daughter's shoulder.

  “Mom, something is out there. I don’t think we should go outside for a while. Is Dad going to be home soon?”

  “I don’t know, do you want me to call him?”

  “He shouldn’t go outside,” Josie said cryptically. “Mom, it's getting really dark,” Eliza said, ignoring what her sister had just said.

  She was right, it had gotten really dark. It was just after 2 pm when they had gone out to chase down Fearne and Mabel. It shouldn’t be this dark yet; even during normal high wind storms, the sun wasn’t blocked out like this. An advantage of living at a higher altitude and living on top of a hill was what Callie had always chalked it up to. But there was something not quite right about this windstorm.

  She picked up her phone to call Kane while walking towards the big living room window that faced Colorado Springs. The wind was making some interesting patterns outside. Actually, not just interesting, it was like the wind was alive. It was forming shapes! She tried dialing Kane, *beep beep beep* the ‘unable to connect’ ringtone buzzed in her ear. As she was bringing down her phone, a face took shape in the window.

  No, that can’t be right, the wind can’t form a face! But there it was, 2 eyes, a nose-like object, a mouth. Well, it wasn’t really a nose; it was more of a beak, but there was a mouth underneath. At least she thought it was a mouth; it opened like it was screaming, but the howl of the wind was constant now. Just as abruptly as it appeared, the “face” reshaped into a swirling pattern, and words appeared:

  That can’t be right, wind can’t make shapes! Windstorms can’t make faces! Windstorms can’t make WORDS!

  “Mom!? What is that?!” Eliza cried, pointing out the window.

  “‘We shouldn’t go outside,” Josie said with an eerie calm that only Josie could exhibit in a moment like this.

  “Yeah, I think we'd better stay inside,” Callie said, taking a deep breath, trying not to let the fear she was feeling be in her voice.

  “‘Okay, okay, okay,” she thought, “‘Kane and I talked about this, well not this, but what if a nuclear bomb went off . . . . This is like a bomb, right? Oh, I wish Kane were here! No, don’t think like that, the girls need you. What did Kane say we needed to have ready in case of a disaster. . . . . Oh, right!”

  “‘Okay, girls, let’s get some things out and put them on the table in case we need them,” Callie said, trying to be as calm as she could for the sake of the girls. “‘Eliza, do you remember where the candles and flashlights are? Let’s make sure we know where those are in case the power goes out. Josie, why don’t you go grab a couple of blankets from downstairs and put them on the couch? I’m going to double-check all the windows and doors.”

  A few minutes later, the three of them were back by the window, looking out. The wind was maybe slowing down, the words were definitely gone. Jane decided to try her cell phone again, but again, nothing. She took a deep breath and then remembered her bread. At least that would partially keep her mind off of what was going on outside.

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  Kane was just wrapping up the sales paperwork in the back office. Business had been a little slow at the Mountain Man this week. Not unusual for the middle of summer. Most people who needed camping gear for the season had already grabbed what they needed. The hunters weren’t quite checking gear yet, but even the fishermen weren’t coming in for supplies. It only concerned him because he was going to be gone for a couple of weeks; this probably meant they would get slammed while he was gone, and he would come back to a mountain of paperwork to restock. Oh well, that was a problem for three weeks from now, it was time to get home and help his wife and kids get ready for his friends and their families.

  As Kane walked out the back door, he did something unusual. It wasn’t unusual for him to look around when he came out the back door; there were usually one or two homeless people hanging around in the shade of the trees behind Mountain Man. Generally, they didn’t bother Kane, but every once in a while, one would get a little too aggressive, asking for food or money. So looking around wasn’t unusual, but looking up at the mountains was. Kane didn’t like the mountain view from his shop; he much preferred the view from his homestead.

  Just as he looked up, the flash occurred.

  “‘What the hell!” Kane yelled. That flash wasn’t normal! It looked like lightning reaching out from a spot close to the mountain, but not from clouds, more like out of thin air. There was a single cloud in the sky before that flash, but it was way too the south, nowhere near where the lightning came from.

  And that wasn’t normal lightning in another way; the color wasn’t right, and there were pastels around the edges of the lightning. Or maybe it was more of a light rainbow coloration. As soon as it came, it was gone. But it left a dark spot in its wake. Kane couldn’t put into words what the dark spot was, but he wasn’t going to stand there gaping at the sky. He needed to get to his truck; his military training had ingrained in him a heightened sense of caution and a sense of when something was unsettlingly wrong. He had that feeling; he needed to get to his girls.

  Not quite running but not walking, Kane made it to his truck, turned it on, and without hesitation started heading south towards home.

  “Callie, I hope you didn’t go into town!” Kane said out loud to himself as he drove.

  Surprisingly, there weren’t many people on the road, but it was an odd time. The clock had said just after 14:30 when he left the office, but there was still usually some traffic on the road at this time. Before he turned onto the interstate, though, he noticed those who were outside were watching the mountains very intently. The roof-line and a-pillar of the truck were in the way, so he couldn’t see what they were looking at, but he could tell something was going on to the south. The dark spot had to be expanding, though; he had to turn on his lights as he drove. If he hadn’t checked the time at the store, he would have thought it was much later in the day.

  Kane picked up his phone as he pulled onto the interstate and tried to dial his wife. *beep* *beep* *beep* The ‘unable to connect’ ringtone sounded loudly over the truck's speakers.

  “Okay, why... Did the lightning knock out the towers . . . I wonder if Callie remembered we have the radios downstairs . . . Radio, maybe there is some information on the radio.”

  Kane turned on the radio in the truck, static, nothing. He flipped through, trying to find a channel with anything on it, switching to AM when he found nothing on the FM. Finding nothing, Kane focused more on the road. As he traveled south, there started appearing cops at the exits, not letting anyone onto the interstate. Strange, what was going on. Then the wind hit.

  It seemed to have come from the direction of the dark spot, but wasn’t traveling like a normal windstorm. Kane had driven through plenty of those. This wind didn’t have a set direction and seemed to “move” out of his way, so there was a constant 10 feet or so in front of his truck. The uneasy feeling Kane had was getting stronger the more time he spent in this windstorm.

  As much as Kane wanted to get home, he slowed his pace a bit. But the 10 feet in front of him stayed clear as long as he kept moving. The wind wanted him to keep moving. Then Kane noticed something else unusual: this wind had particles in it. Not like the normal dust and dirt and debris, something else. As he looked, the particles looked like they were forming a face; at least he thought it was a face. The face didn’t look right to have a beak. There were eyes and a mouth, but the beak, why did the face have a beak?

  Wait, that was his thought. Why does it have a beak? Not ‘what is this?’ Kane couldn’t help but watch this face as the mouth opened like it was saying something. Then just as swiftly as he saw the face, it disappeared, and words appeared!

  Why did it say that!? System? What system?!

  “What is going on!” Kane yelled at nothing in particular as he realized his exit should be coming up. How would he find his exit?!

  Just as he was thinking it, the wind made a wide cone, and there was a 20-foot line in front of him that he could see. It started narrow at the front of his truck, but widened to maybe 30 feet wide at its widest in front of him.

  “‘Can it hear me? What is going on?!” Kane exclaimed silently.

  Just as he was debating his next move, his exit appeared. Kane had to make a quick right-hand turn, hoping no one was next to him as he did so. He made his exit, but he barely missed hitting the signpost at the speed he was going.

  “Just get home, make sure your wife and kids are okay, just get home,” Kane thought as he took another turn. The cone of vision stayed in place, but it looked like the wind was starting to slow down somehow.

  Kane kept going, as he turned onto the final road to his house, the wind was almost completely gone, and he had figured out the wind had reversed direction, heading back towards roughly the area of the dark spot in the sky. Almost like it was being called back.

  As Kane turned into his driveway, the wind was nothing more than a light breeze, and there was very little of whatever those particles were in the air. But as he looked at his goats and cows, they all had a strange glow about them. It was unsettling; the glow and the colors weren’t the same for all of the animals; some had more of a blue glow, some a red. Fearne, his goat, had an almost orange glow to her. What was happening?

  Before getting out of his truck, Kane decided to try one more time to call his wife. Thankfully, this time the ringtone went through. After a few rings, his wife answered the phone.

  “Kane, Kane, where are you!” Kane heard Callie say with tears in her voice.

  “I'm outside in the truck. I just got home. Can you unlock the door for me so I can get inside quickly? And keep the kids away from the door.”

  “Kane, what is going on? And I’m walking to the door now.”

  “I don’t know, we will talk when I get inside.” Kane hung up the phone and grabbed his stuff to dash to the door.

  The minute his truck door opened and he put a foot on the ground, he saw transparent words in front of him say,

  “Fuck that!” Kane exclaimed as he ran to the door after a moment of surprised hesitation.

  Kane ran up the few steps into the house, nearly running over Callie and Zeus. Kane grabbed his wife and hugged her deeply; meanwhile, Zeus started sniffing Kane's front and back furiously.

  “Thank God you are okay. Please tell me you weren’t outside in that wind?” Kane asked softly, letting go of his wife and looking for his twin girls.

  “No, we had just finished getting Fearne and Mabel back in their pen when something strange happened to the sky. Kane, did you see the... the . . . huh, I guess it was lightning?” Callie asked hesitantly, still not sure what words to put to what she saw.

  “Yeah, let’s go with lightning. And the darkness that followed, and then the wind. What the fuck was that wind!?” Kane asked, looking across the kitchen to the living room window where Josie and Eliza were standing.

  “Did... did the wind have a face? Please don’t tell me I’m crazy, the wind didn’t have a face!” Callie exclaimed louder than Kane wanted her to, backing away from Kane as she did.

  In that moment, Josie hurdled herself over Zeus to grab her dad. Eliza quickly followed on the other side.

  “It’s okay, girls, we will be okay,” Kane said, bending over a little to hug a girl in each arm. When had they gotten so big? “Let’s sit down and we can talk, okay?”

  Kane wanted his family away from the open front door and away from the windows, the best he could. Kane shut the front door as they all moved through the kitchen to the living room. Zeus was following, getting under everyone's feet in an attempt to continue sniffing at Kane. Kane tried to bat him away, but Zeus was having none of it. Kane sat down on the couch, and Eliza and Josie climbed on either side of him. He knew they had to be nervous since they practically crawled into his lap. Eliza hadn’t done that in at least 6 months, insisting she was a big girl now that she was 10. Kane decided he needed to enjoy the moment because one way or another, his gut was telling him something unpleasant was coming. Well, unpleasant is a mild word for what his instincts were telling him from multiple tours into the war zones.

  “Callie, what happened down here. What face did you see?” Kane asked as he wrapped his girls closer to him.

  Callie had to take a deep breath to steady herself, “Well, I was walking back to the house and I saw this flash, but it wasn’t a flash, it was bigger! So much bigger! The girls and I ran for the house because we saw the wind picking up stuff. That wasn’t a normal windstorm, Kane. We have had bad windstorms out here, but nothing like that! Oh, shit! My bread!” How could Callie have forgotten again! She jumped up and ran to open the oven, removing the very brown loaf of bread and setting it on the stove to cool..

  “Callie! I don’t care about that damn bread! What happened next?” Kane’s raised tone of frustration came from the living room. Callie looked up from her bread to see worry plastered across her normally stoic husband’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Kane,” Callie said quietly and walked back over to the living room, sitting in the recliner next to the couch.

  Callie proceeded to tell Kane what she had seen from the window, as Eliza interjected with what she saw when it differed from her mom’s description. Josie sat still and silent next to her dad with the distant gaze her mom recognized as being overstimulated and zoning out.

  Callie finished her side of the story with, “and then my phone finally rang, and it was you on the other end. Kane, what is happening? What did you see? How did you get home!? That wind was so horrible!”

  Kane didn’t go into as much detail as Callie and Eliza had, but he told them about the flash of light and the dark spot in the sky. He also told them about the wind “parting” to let him get home. He told them about the words in the wind, but decided not to tell them about the system message he got as soon as he opened his truck door.

  The family sat in silence for a few minutes, then, like the breaking of a trance, the timer Callie had set for when to take her bread out of the pan went off. Callie looked up at Kane and, for a split second, she saw the unfamiliar fear in Kane’s eyes before he looked away and kissed both of their daughters’ heads. He then got up and went to look out the window next to the front door.

  “Fearne is okay, Dad,” Josie said, shocking everyone.

  “What did you say?” Kane stopped midstep and looked back at his normally quiet daughter.

  “Fearne is okay, she has changed though. But don’t go out there yet. Please, Dad, don’t go outside yet; it will change you too.”

  Kane felt his mouth drop open. What had Josie just said? Did she see the glow? How could she? She was on the opposite side of the house when he walked, no, ran in. Kane looked at his wife. Callie was frozen in place; her normally pink face was ash colored. Eliza was the first to move, simply putting her arm around her sister.

  “I’m not going to go outside, but Josie, how do you know about Fearne? What did you see?”

  “I didn’t see it. It was crying, it sounded lost. Dad, I don’t know if it is nice or not. The thing that is farther isn’t nice.”

  Callie finally woke up from her shock, “Who isn’t nice, Josie? Who was crying? Bug, are you okay?”

  Kane moved towards the bedroom where his rifle was. He had sensed something not quite evil but not friendly on his drive home, and that feeling returned abruptly with Josie’s words. He didn’t know why, but something in him told him to trust his stoic daughter. Trust that she was sensing something that none of the rest of them could sense. Or maybe they just couldn’t sense it yet. Either way, Kane was an expert marksman, and if whatever the danger was could be stopped with a bullet, he was going to be ready. But Kane told himself, even if a bullet wouldn’t take it down, he would protect his family with everything he had.

  Callie ignored the timer still going off and moved over to hug her child. Josie didn’t move as Callie reached out to her. She wasn’t in her trance anymore, but she was still too rigid. Callie just held Josie at that moment. What else could she do? She had spent the last couple of years raising her kids, retreating from the world. The world hadn’t been kind to them; it wasn’t evil, but Kane and her had bought their property as a retreat from it all, a way to live a ‘simpler’, slower life for themselves and their kids. It was taking every fiber of Callie’s being to try not to spread the fear and anxiety she was feeling through her hug to her daughter. She knew Josie felt things stronger in some ways than any of them.

  Josie’s diagnosis years before of Autism had come as a shock. But in moments like this, when she knew Josie could tune everything out was a blessing in disguise. Callie knew that the expert saying she would sometimes “lack feeling” was their way of saying she felt things differently, not that she couldn’t feel anything. Callie was going to trust her instincts and trust Josie’s instincts that something in this world had changed. But what has changed?