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PROLOGUE

THE FRONT DOOR STARTS SHAKING IT’S ALWAYS done that whenever the s closed, ever since they o Between the front entrance and the paper-thin walls, they are always aware of the co They irl and a fifty-seven-year-old hter and stepfather who rarely see eye to eye, but who have put their many differences aside to watch the aliens invade Theprayers in Spanish, while the girl has watched the news coverage in awed silence It seems like a movie to her, so irl wonders if the handsoht the irl’s mother, a waitress at a small restaurant don, survived the initial attack

Theoutside One of their neighbors sprints up the stairs, past their floor, yelling the whole way “They’re on the block! They’re on the block!”

Theit Those pale freaks ain’t gonna bother with Harleirl

He turns the voluht She creeps toward the door and stares out the peephole The hallway outside is dim and empty

Like the Midtown block behind her, the reporter on TV looks trashed She’s got dirt and ash sh her blond hair There’s a spot of dried blood on her mouth where there should be lipstick The reporter looks like she’s barely keeping it together

“To reiterate, the initial bo seems to have tapered off,” the reporter says shakily, the adorians, they have taken to the streets en h we have seen sohtest provocation”

The reporter chokes back a sob Behind her, there are hundreds of pale aliens in dark uniforh the streets Some of theht at the camera

“Jesus Christ,” says the man

“Again, to reiterate, we are being—uh, we are being allowed to broadcast They—they—the invaders, they seem to want us here”

Downstairs, the gate rattles again There’s a screech ofand a loud crash Soate down entirely

“It’s theirl says

“Shut up,” the ain “I mean, keep quiet Damn”

They hear heavy footfalls coirl backs away froet kicked in Their downstairs neighbors start to scream

“Go hide,” the irl “Go on”

The htens on the baseball bat that he retrieved from the hall closet when the alien mother ship first appeared in the sky He inches closer to the shaking door, positions himself to one side of it, his back to the wall They can hear noise frohbor’s apartuttural English, screa uncorked They’ve seen the aliens’ guns on television, stared in awe at the sizzling bolts of blue energy they fire

The footsteps resu outside their shaky door The ht on the bat He realizes that the girl hasn’t moved She’s frozen

“Wake up, stupid,” he snaps “Go”

He nods toward the living roo outside

The girl hates when the man calls her stupid Even so, for the first tiirl does what her stepfather tells her She clih thethe same way she’s snuck out of this aparto alone Her stepfather should flee, too She turns around on the fire escape to call to hi into the apartment when their front door is hammered down

The aliens are lier in person than on television Their otherness freezes the girl in her tracks She stares at the deathly pale skin of the first one through the door, at his unblinking black eyes and bizarre tattoos There are four aliens altogether, each of theirl on the fire escape He stops in the doorway, his strange gun leveled in her direction

“Surrender or die,” the alien says

A second later, the girl’s stepfather hits the alien in the face with his bat It’s a powerful swing—the oldas a mechanic, his forearms thick from twelve-hour days It caves in the alien’s head, the creature i into ash

Before her stepfather can get his bat back over his shoulder, the nearest alien shoots him in the chest

The , his shirt burning He crashes through the glass coffee table and rolls, ends up facing the here he locks eyes with the girl

“Run!” her stepfather soth to shout “Run, damn it!”

The girl bounds down the fire escape When she gets to the ladder, she hears gunfire from her apartment She tries not to think about what that means A pale face pokes his head out of herand takes aim at her with his weapon

She lets go of the ladder, dropping into the alley below, right as the air around her sizzles The hair on her arirl can tell there’s electricity coursing through the metal of the fire escape But she’s unharmed The alien missed her

The girl jus and runs to thearound the corner to see the street she grew up on There’s a fire hydrant gushing water into the air; it reirl of summer block parties She sees an overturnedlike it could explode at any minute Farther down the block, parked in the irl sees the aliens’ small spacecraft, one ofship that still looms over Manhattan They played that clip over and over on the news Almost as much as they played the video about the blond-haired boy

John S the video said so

Where is he now? the girl wonders Probably not saving people in Harlem, that’s for sure

> The girl knows she has to save herself

She’s about to run for it when she spots another group of aliens exiting an apart across the street They have a dozen huhborhood, a couple of kids she recognizes frounpoint, they force the people onto their knees on the curb A big alien freak walks down the line of people, clicking a small object in his hand, like a bouncer outside of a club They’re keeping a count The girl isn’t sure she wants to see what happens next

Metal screeches behind her The girl turns around to see one of the aliens fro down the fire escape

She runs The girl is fast and she knows these streets The subway is only a few blocks froirl climbed down from the platform and ventured into the tunnels The darkness and rats didn’t scare her nearly as o She can hide there, irl doesn’t kno she’s going to break the news about her stepfather She doesn’t even believe it herself She keeps expecting to wake up

The girl darts around a corner and three aliens stand in her path Her instinct s co the sidewalk hard One of the aliensat her

“Surrender or die,” it says, and the girl knows this isn’t really a choice The aliens already have their guns raised and aiers

Surrender and die They’re going to kill her no irl is certain of this

The girl throws up her hands to defend herself It’s a reflex She knows it won’t do anything against their weapons

Except it does

The aliens’ guns jerk upwards, out of their hands They fly twenty yards down the block

They look at the girl, stunned and uncertain She doesn’t understand what just happened either

But she can feel so new It’s as if she’s a puppeteer, with strings connecting to every object on the block All she needs to do is push and pull The girl isn’t sure how she knows this It feels natural

One of the aliens charges and the girl swipes her hand fro, and slah the windshield of a parked car The other two exchange a look and start to back away

“Who’s laughing now?” she asks the up