I bit my lip, which is a thing I did when I was thinking. "The alien commander up there has no idea where we took his soldier." What would I do, in his situation? "We could be in any house or barn around here, we could be in a cave in the woods, we could be ten miles down the road. He has no idea." Unless our captive had some sort of transmitter that could be detected even from the bomb shelter. They did, after all, have technology to travel between stars. I tapped my chin, that's another thing I did then I was thinking. "They only sent one ship. If this was a search and rescue mission, they would have sent several ships. This guy started down from orbit before we grabbed fuzzy face, he only planned to pick up hamsters from the first ship."

"What does that mean?" Susie asked.

"It means the next five minutes will tell us what their orders are. If that ship recovers the guys on the ground and flies away, then they're sticking to their original mission plan, and they'll handle search and rescue later. If that ship hangs around, then they've scrubbed the original plan, and they're waiting for reinforcements to sweep the area."

"That's what you'd do?" Susie asked.

"That's what we'd do, the Army."

The alien ship descended again, then climbed and resumed hovering, closer to us. "Damn it! It's Option B. He just dropped off more guys to start searching buildings." I saw Susie check her rifle again. "Susie, forget about any cowboy Alamo last stand shit. All we've got is three rifles, a shotgun and two pistols. If they get close, we head east through the woods. The missiles on that ship could kill all of us from ten thousand feet."

"We're going to give up?"

"We're not giving up, we're being realistic." I couldn't believe I was arguing with Susie about this. "We can't use the ice cream truck again, it's too distinctive, and that alien ship is too close."

"Fine!" Susie shot back. "We wrap our Fuzzy Face in lead blankets, and carry him into the woods here. It's only a mile to the river from here, we can-"

"Hey!" Deb shouted. "The sky! More lights!" We looked up to see the morning sky twinkling again. There were a lot of lights up there. "Oh, damn it. They're bringing in more ships?" Deb asked. "That can't be- WHOA!"

We looked away, spots swimming in our eyes from a searingly bright explosion in the sky right above us. I blinked, staring at the ground, my shadow flickering as more explosions lit up the sky.

"Yeah!" Stan pumped his fist. "We're hitting back! Nuke the bastards!"