The Uprising

The Uprising .....o....o...o..o.o.o..o...o....o.....o.....o....o...o..o.o..o...o....o.....o.....o....o.......o....o...o..o.o.o..o...o....o.....o......o

1 The rumble signaling its approach can be heard for miles. Oft mistaken for thunder, the ominous sound of an eighteen-wheeling truck is not forgotten by those who know it well. Take Tanner Philips for example. He spotted the NOW HIRING sign one day out of the blue, seconds before hearing that engine rev. Tanner didn't know any truckers personally, in fact, he had only read of them in books. Although books did not always paint the prettiest of pictures of truck drivers, Tanner completely respected their line of work. So why did he wait until that particular autumn day to apply for the job? Because all of his other choices had gone up in smoke, I'd guess. Tanner confidently went in to that truck yard, carrying nothing more than his neatly kept resume. Blue Sky Trucking liked his enthusiasm toward learning the ins and outs of the truck driving business. The men in charge declared Tanner hired that very day, and they quickly initiated his training. He was already an excellent driver to begin with, but he still needed to learn much about driving such mammoth trucks. Tanner grew to love being behind the wheel of his truck, he felt like he was finally in charge of something. Truthfully, he WAS. Tanner delivered huge boxed-up items to businesses all over the United States on a daily basis. To know that someone, somewhere, was waiting for his arrival with their shipment was comforting to Tanner. Not long into his trucking career, Tanner had already seen his fair share of traffic accidents on the long stretches of highways. Mostly fender benders, one knucklehead not paying attention to the next one. It wasn't often that Tanner was surprised by anything tremendously. Tanner had seemingly seen it all, including a jackknifed truck that oozed superbond glue all over the highway. Two years into his newfound love of trucking, Tanner ran across the weirdest "accident" he had ever seen. The chain of events that was set off after his "find" is mind-bending. Meet Tanner Philips, born in Oklahoma, Thirty-Four years of age. Things only go downhill from this moment on.

2 On one relatively slow day in October, Tanner was transporting a load from the Midwestern United States to the Eastern side of the U.S.A. The sky was blocked of the sun by massive, dark clouds that threatened rain at any moment. Tanner couldn't help but glance up at the bolts of lightning that were snaking through the cloud cover. Tanner had always had a fear of thunderstorms, at least since his childhood. To avoid hearing the rumbles of thunder, he decided to click on his radio to a loud rock music station in his truck. That helped with the thunder, but it didn't stop the lightning from glaring his windshield every few seconds. The highway, 178, was fairly desolate that day, the automobiles were in small groupings, spread out by many car-lengths. This is why Tanner was surprised to see a stretch of roadway shoulder up ahead that was cluttered with several small vehicles. He instinctively slowed his own truck down as he approached. He saw people huddled together looking toward the ground. He passed the group going well below the speed limit as he gawked at the disturbance. If something was wrong, he wanted to help. He pulled to the side of the road and shut the truck off. Tanner opened his door with caution and then began to walk back to the group of people. They didn't seem to notice Tanner had pulled over. As Tanner approached, he noticed that the people were standing still, just staring at... what-what IS that? Tanner moved to the front of the group with his back to the highway as he stared at the motionless, lifeless crumpled body lying on the asphalt.

3 Chill bumps ran up and down Tanner's arms as he cringed at the horrible sight. The person was lying face down, a thick layer of hair covering his face from the group. He wore a dark leather coat and black pants over steel toe boots. The only visible part of him was his hands... they were scarily pale, and they were both tightly clenched into fists. Amongst all of the horridness surrounding the scene, Tanner could not help but notice that the man had shed no blood. Tanner wondered if he had been in a hit and run, or rather had his body been dumped there... Tanner looked up at the other people's faces. They wore solidly blank faces, and their

lines of sight shot direct paths to the body. The silence was torn to shreds in an instant, when the sound of screeching tires pained Tanner's ears. Everyone turned their attention to the roadway in their continued numb manner. A second accident played out in front of their eyes as a single car lost control on the roadway. The car spun once before leaving the asphalt highway and dropping off into the grass. It disappeared quickly into the dense weeds. No one spoke, no one gasped, not even so much as pointed. One by one they turned back to the more pressing problem on the asphalt at their feet. Because there was no longer a cadaver lying on the ground before them.

4 When one sees so much mayhem at one time and understands so little, all one can possibly do is stand in awe. And so it was with Tanner, and those who congregated around him. Tanner was the first to walk away from the flat patch of tar and he made his way to the place where the car had drove off of the highway. As if everything he had just witnessed weren't enough, he saw that no tire tracks were carved in the tall weeds. He noted that no skid marks were burned into the road, and most importantly - no car was visible at all from the roadway. Tanner gulped loudly as he scanned the area around him. His mind posed no plausible theories or explanations as to what was going on. At some point, he realized that much time had cleanly passed, everyone else had left, and that he needed to continue on to deliver his shipment. Tanner trudged back to his eighteen-wheeler and pulled back on to the highway again. Tanner had a headache from all the confusion he had endured. He flicked on the truck's headlights as the sun began to fade behind the trees. Traffic around him was thinning to almost none as he drove on. As Tanner began to get a grip on himself he decided to cut on his truck radio. He set the dial to a talk station to calm himself down. In between thoughts he heard snippets of voice emitting from the radio. "...are still threatened by them..." “...continue our exploration rather blindly..." "...could be months, but we are probably just looking at just days until..."

Tanner reached for the knob and clicked it off. After a mere five seconds of silence, apart from the road noise, the radio came back on, scaring Tanner enough to make him swerve out of his lane. The talk radio station was still on, but Tanner had never so much as touched that button! He slapped the knob to turn the noise back off, but this time it was only two seconds before it came back to life again. As Tanner stared at the green LED clock on his radio, the station changed voluntarily. Not once, but THREE times. The station number flickered in and out of visibility, showing that it wasn't being used. The static it brought confirmed that. Tanner began to sweat as he watched to see what his ghost dial would do next. The volume bars answered his question, as they began trailing upward to Nine bars, the highest setting. Through the distortion of the ocean-like static, a whispering voice started to rattle the speakers. But Tanner could hear it as clear as a megaphone. The voice repeated, like it was a recorded message. It was a haunting message indeed. "...Human Interference Averted...Continue As Planned..."

5 The message repeated over and over. It must have been important to someone, Tanner pondered. At first listen, the message seemed meaningless to Tanner - it didn't really sink in at all. But then he realized that the voice spoke of "Humans" as if it was foreign to the idea of the human species! Each singular word in the message could be deeply read into. The word interference simply suggested that an attempt at messing something up was stopped. Averted... human interference had been averted. It became hard for Tanner to really concentrate on his driving, with all the confusion that further tightened the invisible clamp on his head. Tanner came to his senses and parked at a 'Natural Wildlife viewing area'. No one was there, after all it WAS dark now, and rainfall had begun to pick up strength. Tanner turned the massive engine off and put the keys in his pocket. -Silence A throbbing headache jabbed at Tanner's brain like a heavyweight boxer as he tried to close his eyes. After about two minutes of shut-eye, his breathing had slowed as he neared sleep. The deep blackness that constituted his shut eye lids was cut short by a bright, unforgiving white light. Tanner did not even feel

like opening his eyes at that moment in time. Opening them would surely spell trouble. The light, however, would not be ignored. Tanner creaked his left eye open sadly, and was abruptly bombarded with the light. He immediately pushed back into his seat to escape the rays. What was that?? In the middle of a grassy field that was known as a wildlife preservation zone, an unbearable beam of a light source was slowly moving past. What wasn't lit up was silver-colored. Metallic. The moving, glossy metallic mammoth THING hovered only ten feet above the blistered ground.

6 Tanner silently studied the object that wanted attention Oh-So desperately. The roving craft's sheer size could be compared to something like a minivan. Floating. Tanner continued to eye the shape as it casually disappeared into the infinite tree line, still glowing brightly. Tanner turned his head back to his truck's dashboard, struggling to find something normal to look at for a while. At that very moment, a pain began to sear into the breastbone of the man that surely could be compared to being zapped by a cattle prod. Tanner lurched forward, tearing off his seatbelt and flying out of the tractor trailer. He clutched the skin of his chest tightly, trying to rid himself of the immense pain... only if just for a second. After Tanner had fallen to his knees, the pain faded away in that instant. But his chest still felt warm. He lifted his t-shirt to his unshaved chin and saw a bright red mark in the dead center of his chest. Tanner furrowed his brow and walked over to his truck's convex blind spot mirror for a better look. The flushed color on his chest was not what he had expected to see. It was a burn mark, like a branding. In the mirror, the shape was backward, but Tanner could tell that it was an inscription of a planet. The planet had deep craters, and below the shape was the number 000-1178. "What in the HELL is GOING ON?!" Tanner yelled to no one person in particular. The day had certainly been the oddest one of his entire life. He was not aware that answers would be arriving soon, in ways that would only serve to frighten him more.

7

Back in his truck, Tanner drove on to find the nearest rest stop. He was shaking in his seat, turning his head to examine every unusual sound he encountered. Although the pain of his new "tattoo" had initially went away, it returned in short spurts... with a vengeance. The burning sensation was an unpleasant one that caused Tanner's EYE'S to water. After riding for about fifteen minutes straight, tensely holding the steering wheel all the way, Tanner drove up on a "Sleep Well" motel. Without hesitation he pulled in to the meager parking lot, blocking up seven spaces. After paying the dull motel owner, Tanner headed to his room, number Eight. Tanner felt terrible about not making his shipment, so he called the recipient to explain. After leaving a message on their answering machine, Tanner settled in to his bed. After taking several aspirin, Tanner reached for the television remote. Before his hand could reach the remote, the television clicked itself on. "Oh, God...," Tanner mumbled. The television clicked its way to an unused channel, a black screen. Even in the pitch blackness of the tube, the figure of a sitting man, otherwise in-describable, could be made out. Tanner wanted to shield his eyes, his ears, whatever... he didn't want anything else to happen to him that day. As if sensing his fear, the shadow figure, sitting completely still, began to speak directly to Tanner Philips that evening.

8 The voice was so mechanical sounding. It was almost as if was being generated on the fly by a computer. But the whisper of it made it clear very quickly that it was the SAME voice from Tanner's truck radio. "Dear Sir, you may have realized that an identification number has been stamped - in effect - on to your human body," Tanner had not ever heard such an odd dialect before. "This number will be what you will answer to from now till forever." "You probably wonder why you need a number. The reason is, we need-" The television flickered for a moment and the sound went out "...are now a prisoner in our confines. You do not need to do anything at this time. You do not need to find us, or call for help now... someone will be coming to retrieve you soon enough." The shadow on the screen paused before continuing on. "It was not an accident, or what you call a coincident, that you witnessed several in-human things today. In fact, everything you saw with your vision was part of a test we have conducted." Tanner's forehead was cemented into a permanent frown. "And only you, Zero Zero Zero dash Eleven Seventy Eight, were observant enough for our people to recruit."

"Your humanness is very odd in nature, but we shall make you work well for our purposes. Until you receive further information, this communication is OVER. You will be retrieved shortly. Good Earth to you." Tanner sat motionless on his uncomfortable motel bed staring at a now blank television screen. The message he had just heard could very well have been enough to end the story of Tanner Philips as we know it... but it was far from over. Because just as the minute hand on the clock above the rabbit-eared television clicked forward one notch, a man walked in to his room. Yes, out of the motel closet stepped the 'dead' man Tanner had come in contact with on Highway 178. All at once it became clear that the man, whose face was finally visible was not at all a regular man... Because his face was that of an alien.

THE END OF FEAR: "The Uprising" - - - *PART I?*. READ ALL OF THE NEWEST FEAR E-BOOKS AT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.fearbooks.com WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY: MATTHEW WATTS