Free Meteorite Strike by A. G. Taylor

from the ignition.
    â€œTrust me,” he said, putting the keys in her hand. “Just don’t stray too far. That fire can spread fast. We might need to get out of here in a hurry.”
    They jumped out and Daniel set to work with the pump. Sarah stuffed the heavy keys in her jeans and led Robert over to the building. The very air near the fire seemed hotter and she was aware of it growling in the distance.
    Robert took her hand. “It’s scary.”
    She gave his fingers a squeeze and smiled at him, trying to look reassuring. “We’ll be quick.”
    The door to the building stood ajar and Sarah pushed it open cautiously with her free hand.
    â€œHello?” she called. “Anybody home?”
    There was no response. She led Robert inside.
    It was a storeroom of some kind. Boxes of crisps, chocolate bars and other snacks lined the walls, probably for the drivers who transported the processed oil from the refinery around the country. Robert’s eyes widened as he saw a box filled with his favourite bar.
    â€œCool!” he said, grabbing the whole thing off the shelf, almost spilling the contents in the process.
    â€œGreat,” said Sarah. “We get to live off junk food for the next week.”
    â€œSo don’t have any,” Robert replied, his mouth already half full with a bar. He picked up another and tossed it to his sister.
    Shaking her head, Sarah opened the wrapper, finding herself suddenly starving. In the earlier excitement they’d completely forgotten breakfast. The chocolate inside was soft, almost melted in the heat, but it tasted better than any she’d ever had before. In a few bites it was gone.
    â€œAnother?” asked Robert, waving a second bar temptingly.
    Mum wouldn’t have approved, Sarah knew, but these were special circumstances. She nodded and they each started on a new bar, grinning at one another stupidly.
    To the rear of the building something clattered, making them both start.
    Sarah put her chocolate down on the nearest shelf and motioned for Robert to stay where he was. Walking quickly and quietly, she made her way past shelves and cardboard boxes, noticing a door in the far wall for the first time.
    â€œHello?” she called out. Her voice sounded small in the silence of the room. “Is someone there?”
    Sarah reached out and tried the handle of the door, which turned stiffly.
    The room beyond was small and dark, the only light provided by a window set high up in the wall. In the middle of the room, an Asian woman was slumped over a desk, black hair spilling over a pile of paperwork. She clutched a ballpoint pen between her fingers as if she’d passed out in the middle of writing something. The scene gave Sarah a chill.
    Something moved by the woman’s feet and Sarah almost cried out. A ginger cat jumped forward and slid past her out of the door at full pelt.
    â€œJust a cat, Robert!” Sarah called with relief as she backed out of the room. “Let’s try to save it.”
    It was then that she experienced that strange feeling again: the one she’d felt on the front porch of the Barkers’ house. Like a kind of warning light going off in her brain. Or a premonition of something bad.
    Robert.
    He wasn’t standing where she’d left him. Her eyes darted to the door. A huge, white figure was dragging her brother away, its massive hand clamped over his mouth to stop him from crying out.
    â€œRobert!” she cried out. The head of the thing turned sharply in her direction. Its face was an oval-shaped mirror in which she saw a distorted reflection of the storeroom and herself, small and stretched, standing in the doorway. For a moment all she could think was that an alien was taking her brother. A mirror-faced alien from the meteorite.
    She followed without a second thought as they disappeared through the doorway.
    Outside she saw Daniel by the truck, his arms held by two more of the aliens,