I woke in my bunk, completely disorientated. Clasping my right hand to my head as my left arm supported my torso; I tried to come to terms with where I was. Cognitive thought was being marred by a particularly sinister hangover. As the blurriness of my vision eased, I could begin to make out the familiar grey walls and bunks of my resident barracks.
We had had a heavy drinking session last night to celebrate completing advanced combat training. Several of my comrades were still in their bunks, either fast asleep or groaning awake, much like I was. Marks was sitting on his bunk with a set of cards dealt on the bed. He was clearly in the middle of a game of poker, which he usually played with Tyrone. For some reason though, Tyrone was not at the bunk, but rather staring out the window on the other side of the barracks. He looked deeply concerned about something outside, which was beyond my vision from where I was lying.
Then Tyrone gulped, at which point I spoke up. "What the hell are you looking at?" I inquired.
Before he could respond, Marks appended "Yeah T, I thought we were playing cards here!" to my question. Evidently, they had been in the middle of a game when Tyrone had noticed something out the window and deserted the game to investigate.
"No..." Tyrone responded, "I don't believe we are." His voice sounded shaky, as if whatever had held his attention so rigidly had terrified him to his very core.
He had now gained the attention of Marks and me, as well as Doherty, who had only just come to. Doc (as he was colloquially known to most of our platoon) was in no position to stand up, but Marks and I walked over to join Tyrone, and see what the hell was going on out there. I was still about three or four feet away from the wall, but I could make out a large tear in the sky. The blue Arizona sky had been blended with a dark purple vortex-looking shape. An eerie green lightning sparked around the tear, which seemed to evaporate any of the small clouds that dared to go near it.
"What the fuck is that?" Marks queried. I had to assume he wasn't expecting any of us to know the answer.
It looks like a temporal rip or something, I mused, offering my best layman's guess. "It's the damnedest thing".
Doc was now pulling himself to, seemingly the fourth man of our platoon to wake after the big celebrations last night. Intrigue was a virtue and a curse which affected all of us, and Doc simply couldn't just lie there without finding out what was going on. Hangover, be damned!
Unfortunately, Doc was the sort of person who expected everybody else to think just like him. So as he made his way towards where we were, he tried to shake the sleeping soldiers awake to allow them to see it too.
He didn't shake them too vigorously however and unsuccessfully managed to wake even a single one of them. By the time Doc came up to join us, Marks and I were still in the shock state that Tyrone was in before. Tyrone had developed beyond shock, and moved away from the window to look around. As Tyrone stepped away, Marks, who had been standing behind in between me and Tyrone, came in to take his place. Then Doc came along and stood on the spot that Marks had just vacated.
"Holy fuck", Doherty exclaimed. "Am I still drunk or what?"
"I sure as shit wanna be I can tell you." It soon became apparent that Tyrone was looking for a leftover vodka bottle with some contents left. There were a few bottles strewn about the barracks, but most of which were emptied or even smashed. One bottle was under Simon's pillow, and was still bosoming his head. Without any sign of compassion for the sleeping Simon, Tyrone yanked the bottle out from beneath the limp pillow. His delight at the sound of liquid splashing around in the bottle quickly diminished at the sight of a sodden cigarette butt that had been pushed into the bottle.
While Tyrone rummaged around for a good bottle of vodka, me, Marks and Doc continued to gape at that bizarre "storm" shape in the sky. The vortex contained within its circular form seemed to quicken and lull; as the patch of sky it dominated expanded and contracted in rhythm. The green lightning began to stretch further across the sky, and steadily increased in number until they were more than one per second.
The storm's eccentric show had cast a powerful trance over the three of us. I frequently had to force a blink when I felt my eyes going dry, because my eyes weren't blinking of their own accord. Then suddenly, our attention was freed by Tyrone's excited shout of "A-ha!"
He had found himself a bottle of vodka, sans cigarette ends, and he looked as proud as when he had completed the training course the day before. "Oh man, I need this!" he said contentedly.
Just as he brought the tip of the bottle to his mouth and the spirit began trickling out, Marks interrupted with "Er mate, I think that's the bottle I spat in."
Recoiling in disgust, Tyrone propelled the bottle towards the floor in front of him and watched as shards of glass cascaded across the centre of the room.
"Fuck!" Although none of the vodka-phlegm mix had touched his mouth, Tyrone felt the need to wipe his sleeve over it just in case. "God damn it, Jason!"
"I wouldn't have told him!" Doc chuckled to himself. Tyrone recovered his self and moved back to the window. Just as the four of us glanced out of the window for the first time as a group, a blinding white flash scorched our retinas. I flicked my head round in a millisecond, squeezing my eyelids together as tightly as they'd ever been.
Once the white had subsided, and my eyes had acclimatised back to normal lighting I reopened my eyes. Another vortex had appeared, on the northern part of the sky. This tear was much further away, but closer to the horizon. The newly formed tear in the sky was probably smaller as well as being further away, and had none of the green lightning that the old one had.
We all watched the new vortex's nativity with jaw-swaying amazement. The contrast between bright and dark colours fluctuated as the two blended effortlessly together and back again. This went on for an unknown length of time, but the fear and intrigue that had been weighing on me all this time was numbed away by an overwhelming feeling of wonder and beauty. I'd give anything to have had that feeling for longer, but it was not meant to be.
The high spirits brought about by the second vortex were fiercely cast from us by what felt like an earthquake. The barracks, and everything (and everyone) inside were jolted, and all soldiers who had remained sleeping were taken from their slumber. Those that slept in top bunks rolled right off them and onto the hard concrete floor. Finn and Eddie Coughlin in particular awoke with a cry. All the soldiers who had until then been asleep woke at that point, some more vigorously than others. Once they had woken however they all laid there in the same manner: caressing their heads, or in the case of those who had fallen, their various bumps and bruises.
Of course it was obvious it hadn't been an earthquake; that would have been too much of a coincidence to happen on the same morning of these freakish appearances in the sky. And in fact the first of the two vortexes had all but ceased turning. As it eased into a stationary condition a hundred or so forks of the green lightning emerged, and with it an alien-looking craft. The under-side of the vessel looked like a dark grey metal crate, but the top half looked like a giant crustacean. Its callous skin was coloured everything from off-white to a dark green-brown.
The peculiar vessel had numerous large protrusions from its upper body, facing front, back and bottom. The rear pair of "limbs" propelled the craft forward, and the front pair was just flailing around, not appearing to be performing any function. The other six or so limbs were strongly grasped around the bottom half of the vessel, suggesting it was in fact not a part of it.
This monstrous, bizarre spacecraft shook side to side as it steered through the vortex, and then eased itself into a straight direction. It first began to head west, remaining at a reasonable altitude, but all of a sudden it changed course, as if something had taken the pilot's attention. Now it was heading more or less directly towards our base, and instead of keeping high up it was pulling downwards as a plane would do when its engine had blown.