Author's Note: Apparently I've been writing this story for over a year now. Good news is, we're getting to the end! Bad news is, it means I'll actually have to start thinking about this whole 'sequel' thing. Or maybe that's also good news. I don't know. Anyway, bit of a shorter chapter this time, but it's still holidays over here in Western Australia and I should be able to get through another couple of chapters before university starts up again.

I should mention that one of the scenes in this chapter is greatly expanded from what was in the movie. The movie version is really short, so short that it barely makes sense - so I thought it would be better to go a little more in depth. Enjoy :-)

The Plan

"Hey, Charles. Wake up. I think we're here."

"Huh… what?"

"We're here." Joe tapped his friend on the shoulder.

"Where's 'here?'"

"Greenville. The Air Force Base." Joe leaned forwards and peered out the windows as Charles blearily opened his eyes.

The air force base was a big complex of buildings close to the Indiana border, about fifty miles north of Lillian. The convoy was driving along the outer fence; Joe couldn't see much of the base itself, just a couple of aging two-storey offices and a whole bunch of long, corrugated-iron sheds. The sheds had big numbers painted on the sides – one, three, four, nine – and were all starting to rust. He faintly remembered hearing something about the base being shut down a few years back, because it certainly didn't seem to be in use now.

And then the bus was turning. They slowed down, almost to a stop, and trundled through an open boom gate in the fence ('EAST ENTRANCE,' it said, 'AF PERSONNEL ONLY'). A soldier waved them through from a little guardhouse on the side and they turned again, into a big asphalt parking lot that was rapidly filling up. Dozens of cars were already parked along one side of the fence, while school buses pulled into bays to disgorge their dozens of passengers. Snaking lines of people stretched between sheds and hangars. Air force men directed vans and trucks to different areas of the base as more and more vehicles trickled in. Their bus kept going, past the assembly area, driving towards one of the rusting aircraft shelters.

It was weird; the evacuation was all so organised. The fire had spread around Lillian incredibly quickly, but the air force had been ready to go as soon as the evacuation was called – trucks, buses, hundreds of soldiers, already spread around town. Almost like they'd been waiting for it. Expecting it.

But that was impossible. Wasn't it?

Inside, Joe and Charles were escorted off the bus, along with the other passengers – and all of the panic and confusion came instantly rushing back. The whole town was here. There had to be hundreds of people squashed into the creaking hangar, a solid mass of sweat and suitcases, all slowly moving towards the opening at the far end. Daylight streamed in through dusty windows far above, illuminating old scaffolding and scratched wooden walls. Joe clutched his papers in one hand and followed Charles through the crush.

"File in. File in please, file in!"

They passed through the open gate at the end of the building and into the main evacuation centre. This hangar was much larger, cleaner too, with corrugated-iron walls and a roof that stretched high above. The floor had been divided up into different areas based on family name and Charles craned his neck, looking for-

"There! H through N," he said, pointing.

They made their way over to the right-hand wall. A soldier ushered them through a gap in the temporary fence and they started looking for familiar faces. Someone was arguing close by, voice raised over the buzz of conversation.

"Corporal! I need to get back to my house, I left some medication that my wife needs—"

"Sir, the town is sealed off. No one's allowed in."

"But I can't get it anywhere else! I have to go back!"

And then, a familiar voice: "Excuse me. Excuse me!"

Charles' mother suddenly appeared out of the crowd. She looked worried, flustered, a bag over one shoulder, but then she saw them and relief flooded her face. "Charles? Charles! Oh, thank god." She rushed towards them and gave her son a quick hug. "I went back to the house and you were gone!"

"Yeah, they put us on the bus," Charles explained.

"Oh, well I'm just glad you're here, we've been worried sick." She smiled, saw Joe standing behind him. "Hey sweetie."

"Hey." He turned to Charles. "I'm gonna find my dad."

Charles frowned. "You gonna tell him about that huge—"

"Yes!" Joe cut him off quickly and started moving into the crowd.

Mrs Kaznyk called out after him. "Come back if you can't find him!"

On a cot in the base's improvised triage unit – fifty beds, transferred from Lillian hospital – Louis Dainard stared into the distance. Tired. Injured. Hungover. In shock. His face was red and bruised, his shirt still spotted with blood, and he was muttering to himself softly, about beasts and his daughter and things you couldn't quite hear.

The nurse made him swallow another couple of painkillers, and moved on to her next patient.

The evac centre was, basically, the definition of ordered chaos. Walkie-talkies squawked. Orders were barked. Residents complained and argued as PA announcements echoed through the air, about the fire, about the conditions, about the need for 'all small children to wear a wristband at all times'. There were a thousand people in the hangar so far with more flooding in every minute. Beds had been set up in long lines, dug up from god knows where.

Joe pushed through the crowd, carrying his backpack in one hand, looking all over for a glimpse of a black police uniform.

He hadn't seen his dad yet.

Come to think of it, he hadn't seen his dad that morning, either, when he'd left go to Charles' place. That wasn't really unusual – Jack sometimes had to leave early for work – but last night, after the argument…

It was a bad feeling. A crappy feeling. And his dad wasn't usually a hard person to find.

Joe spotted something rising out of the throng and made his way towards it. It was a curtained-off area in the corner of the hangar, surrounded by gas tanks and crates of medical equipment. He walked up to the edge and cautiously peered inside.

Some kind of first-aid area, it looked like; hospital beds, IV drips, nurses hurrying around with clipboards in their hands. And almost instantly his eyes settled on one thing.

Thick arms. Unbuttoned shirt. That distinctive shaggy blonde hair.

Joe stood there for a moment, thinking. In normal circumstances he would've stayed the hell away, but… this definitely wasn't normal. It was the first familiar face he'd seen other than Mrs. Kaznyk. And, well, his dad and Mr. Dainard seemed to have this weird relationship where they watched each other very, very carefully…

So, with his heart beating fast, Joe Lamb crept over to Louis Dainard's hospital bed and knelt down beside him. It was quieter, here behind the curtains. You're not scared, he told himself. You're not. Just ask him, that's all you have to do.

"Mr Dainard, it's Joe Lamb," he said quickly. "I – I know you don't like me, and I'm sorry about that, but I'm looking for my dad."

Louis looked up. His eyes flashed with recognition and suddenly he grabbed Joe's shirt, pulled him close. "It took her," Louis said desperately. "It took Alice."

Joe twitched. "…What?"

"I saw it. It was big…" he murmured. "And, I don't know, it was something. I've never… I've never seen – it was so… dark, like nothing. No one believes me." Louis shook his head helplessly. He was struggling, almost crying. "No one believes me. They just keep giving me pills, and – it took her… Joe, it took Alice. No one believes me."

There was a pause. Joe forced himself to stay close, not to pull away. He stared into those vacant, haunted eyes…

…and suddenly, something clicked. The realisation set his mind on fire.

"I believe you," Joe whispered.

And Louis Dainard looked up, his face filled with hope—

They sat in a circle in the middle of the evac hangar, using Preston's suitcase as a table. It had taken a while to gather everyone together (especially Cary, who was so short he'd been almost impossible to spot), but now they were here. Charles, Cary, Preston, Martin and Joe – a little island of friendship, surrounded by beds and piles of luggage.

Except for the one person who was conspicuously missing.

"It took her," Joe said.

"Took who?" Preston asked.

"Alice. Guys, it's – it's hard to explain. I talked to her dad, and he said he saw something, this big—"

Charles cut him off. "That thing took her!?"

Martin frowned. "What thing?"

"Yeah. What the hell are you talking about, Joe?" Cary retorted.

"There's this – on the film, there was—" Joe closed his eyes, and took a quick breath. I'll have to start at the beginning. "Charles… do you want to tell them?"

"Uh – sure, I guess."

Charles looked at everyone.

Everyone looked at Charles.

"So… you remember the night of the train crash?" he said nervously.

"Yeah. We were there, dumbass." Cary rolled his eyes.

"Shut up. And you remember all those weird white cubes and stuff?"

"Oh, yeah," Preston murmured. "Did we ever figure out what they were for?"

"No, but one busted straight through my wall," Joe replied.

"It what?"

"You took one home?"

"Yes, I did, but—"

"It could've exploded or something!"

"Martin! I know! Just – listen to Charles." Joe sighed. "The other thing's more important."

They paused for a second as a couple of soldiers walked past, dragging an unconscious guy in an orange leather jacket.

"Anyway," Charles continued. "I took the film from that night to be developed, and I just got it back this morning. Joe and I watched it at my house."

"…And?"

"And most of it was bad. Really blurry, smoke everywhere. Basically useless. Except at the end."

"The camera was lying on its side. Pointed at one of the carriages," Joe explained.

"That's right. And it saw something climb out of the train."

"'Something?'" Cary asked sceptically.

"Yeah. Like a creature. It was kind of like a – an insect, or a crab. Except really big, taller than the train. Lots of legs." Charles tried to make the right shape with his fingers, but only succeeded in making a demented-looking jellyfish. "It was huge. And it climbed out of the carriage, and just walked off past the camera."

Now Martin was even more confused. "So you're saying you saw – what. A monster? An alien? A, a military experiment or something?"

"I don't know! But it's real. And it's on my film." Charles dug around in his jacket, and pulled out the film reel in question. Everyone stared at it with nervous eyes, half-expecting it to dissolve into spiders or something.

"That's… I don't know, man." For once, Cary was speechless.

"And guys, think about it," Joe said quietly. "It explains everything. It explains the train. It explains why the military is here. It explains all the weird stuff that's been happening. If there's some kind of – some kind of creature on the loose… it could even explain why Dr. Woodward crashed his car."

There was a pause.

"He's right, you know," Preston said. "It explains a lot."

"Oh, man," Martin groaned.

"Yeah." Joe nodded. "And it took Alice."

"What do you mean it took her? Did you see it?"

"No, but I just talked to her dad, like twenty minutes ago. He said he saw – he saw this thing, and I know it's the same thing that's on that film. I know it. Guys, we HAVE to go back."

They all looked at him like he was from Uranus.

"Back where?" Charles asked.

"To do what?" Preston added.

"We have to go back to town. To find Alice, to find her."

"Are you shitting me?" Cary exclaimed.

"Dude, she's dead," Martin said fearfully, "Alice is dead, if it took her, she—"

"Don't say that!" Joe interrupted. "She's not dead! But we have to go back to save her! Come on, guys!"

Now the whole group was starting to panic a little. "Joe! What do you actually expect to do, man? The town's closed. We're not allowed to go back," Charles hissed.

"Look, I have an idea," Joe shot back. "I'm going whether or not you come – which I really hope you do. Come on, guys!"

"Wait a minute – first of all, I wanna LIVE. Okay?" Preston looked around, eyes wide. He held up his left hand which was still covered in band-aids from the train crash. "These fingers are for playing the piano! Not for breaking through military blockades!

"It won't be that hard! We just need to find someone who can drive. We won't even need to be careful until we get back to Lillian."

"But no one wants to go back except us!" Charles said. "And in case you've forgotten, Alice isn't exactly here to help out!"

"What about Donny? He's got a car, I saw him driving it on the way here."

Cary shook his head. "That guy from the camera shop? I am not getting in a car with him."

"Whatever, we'll find someone else. Just—"

"And where are we even going?" Martin asked. "No one's found that thing so far, what makes you think we can?"

"I have an idea, I said! And I'm pretty sure I saw it once too!" Joe said urgently.

"Pretty sure? That's not exactly reassuring."

"Fine! I'm ninety percent sure, Preston! Ninety percent sure!"

"There's also the fire to worry about. The whole town might just be ash by now."

"Who cares about the fire? The air force would've put it out—"

People were starting to look at them curiously, wondering about the raised voices. Joe closed his eyes for a few brief seconds, then continued a little more quietly. "…put it out. Right?"

"I suppose so..."

There was silence for a moment as everyone tried to absorb what Joe was saying. It was, to be honest, a lot to take in.

"You said you had an idea," Charles murmured eventually.

"Yeah. I've been thinking about it," Joe replied. "What do you use to scare away big animals?"

"Loud noises, I guess. Bright light."

"Yeah. And what makes loud noises and light?"

"…guns?" Martin suggested.

"No, it's something that we already have."

Suddenly, Cary's eyes lit up. "Firecrackers," he whispered.

"Exactly. Firecrackers. We light them up and scare the monster away."

Preston didn't look convinced. "That's assuming it even does get scared. By anything. You said yourself it was huge, what makes you think it's going to behave like any normal animal?"

"Well, it's been hiding from the air force, right? It must know that guns and soldiers are bad, so…" Joe sighed. "We have to go. We have to try. It's Alice, guys. If one of us was taken that thing, would we just drop everything to save them?"

They all looked at the floor. No one had a good response to that.

"So… that's all I've got. That's the plan," he said nervously. "But come on, who's with me?"

Cary immediately leapt to his feet and dumped his backpack on the floor. "I have six tons of explosives in this thing," he declared. "Let's find that thing and blow it to shit!"

Jen Kaznyk lay in her cot, looking casually beautiful (or beautifully casual) as she flicked through her Columbia Records magazine. The whole evacuation thing had been kind of relaxing actually – no responsibilities, no arguments, no mother nagging in her ear – and it would have almost perfect if her little brother Charles wasn't right now kneeling by her bed, all up in her face and asking stupid questions.

"As if I'm gonna help you," she said derisively.

"Do this for me and I'll babysit the twins next week, so you can go to Wendy's stupid party."

Jen sat up at that. She closed her magazine and stared at him suspiciously.

"I'm not shitting you," Charles insisted. "You can't ask me any questions though. And you can't tell anyone. I'm serious. NOBODY."

Jen sighed. "Ugh, does it have to be him?"

"Yes or no, you ugly freak! I'm about to rescind the offer!"

On the other side of the hangar, Jen sat down on an empty cot and put on her best seductive-yet-vulnerable look. "This whole evacuation thing's really freaking me out," she said huskily. "Making me rethink my priorities. Saw you over here and thought maybe we could kick back."

On the bed opposite, Donny Olsen stared back at her – utterly gobsmacked. "We… we totally could," he managed, smiling idiotically.

Jen flicked her hair, glanced to the side. "I asked Charles about you," she murmured, "and – he said you're a great guy."

"I totally am."

Jen laughed softly, and Donny's heart soared. So many dreams, coming true before his eyes. Then, suddenly, she gave him an awfully businesslike stare.

"Will you hate me if I start our relationship by asking a favour?"