Free The Grays by Whitley Strieber

trunks trembling.
    “Can’t you see that she’s in real trouble?” Conner yelled. He took off toward the object.
    THE ONE WATCHED CONNER, WHILE the Two and the Three regarded Marcie with the reverent cunning of boys in a candy store. The Two drew closer, now pressing his face into her churning aura. Angry static bounced around the tiny space—the collective was furious that they were not performing as directed.
    Which made little difference. The thousand grays who were here were spread all over the planet, feeding in Brazil and Britain and China, mininggravitite in the iron deposits of New York, extracting Helium 3 fuel on the moon. They were linked to the great collective, yes, but it was moving toward Earth far more slowly than the lead group, so what could it actually do? Nothing, and they would carry out its orders . . . eventually.
    The Three Thieves would have been more efficient with Marcie, but the luscious fears, the darting hopes, the bright, wet desires that filled her smooth flesh were just too much of a temptation. Dan Callaghan was awake anyway, so the whole expedition was a waste. They might as well make of it whatever they could.
    The Two, as the negative pole of the triad, showed her a long needle. Her eyes widened as she saw the silver of it appearing out of the dark that surrounded her. She could not see the Thieves, of course, they were too careful for that.
    He plunged the needle into her forehead and she shrieked and they gobbled her agony . . . for the moments that it lasted feeling as alive as their distant ancestors must have, before they had enhanced themselves with machine intelligence, and lost contact with the only thing that mattered, in the end, which was feeling.
    Without it, life was ongoing death, and to find it again, crossing a galaxy was as nothing, not even if the journey took fifty generations, not even if it took a thousand.
    From a billion times a billion miles away, they had seen Earth glowing with emotion. It had drawn them like excited moths to its mystery, first in hundreds, then in thousands, and soon the billions would come to drink the healing waters of the human soul . . . if all went well.
    THE KELTONS WENT CLOSE, RUNNING low like actors on a movie battlefield. It occurred to Dan that Jimbo Kelton might be recording the prank for the later amusement of fellow perpetrators.
    All the people in the neighborhood were not only known to each other, they counted one another as friends. Nancy and Chris were dear friends of Katelyn and Dan. Kelton was a historian, working at the far end of the campus from the Hall of Science, but still a member of the cozy little Oak Road crowd. The Warners and the Callaghans, were very close—or had been.
    Nancy clutched her cell phone to her ear. Dan felt for his, miraculously found it in a pocket of his jacket. He punched in 9-1-1. “This is Dr. Daniel Callaghan, one-oh-three Oak Road. There’s a fire in the field behind our house that borders Wilton Road. Somebody’s trapped in it.”
    The screams lost form, became a continuous roar of pain.
    Dan closed his cell phone while the dispatcher was still talking. He was now convinced that this was serious. Those screams were real. He took off after Conner, going flat-out.
    “Don’t let him near it,” Katelyn howled, passing him in her pursuit of her son.
    As Dan ran, he looked for the basket, for the burning student, but he could see only the fearsome glare, like looking into a thousand car headlights or a flashbulb that would not quit. He shielded his eyes and struggled closer. “Conner! Conner where are you?”
    “I can’t see him, Dan! CONNER! CONNER!”
    Another scream came, trembling and high, desolate with agony, then the object wavered a little in the air. Far off, the thin wail of a siren could be heard, then more sirens, getting louder.
    “Conner, oh thank God!”
    He was with the Kelton boys, his small form hidden in the bulk of their teenage bodies.
    “Come on, we’re getting