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Harry wiped sweat from his brow and spat on the desert floor. “Are you sure this is where he said they’d come?”

Clyde nodded and kicked sand onto the fresh bubble of spit. Harry smirked at the gesture.

“Said they arrive here every Thursday evening before dusk,” Clyde said. “No government surveillance out here yet. They have the patrols’s timing down. One of the few places they can come without anyone catching them.”

Harry knew there weren’t many areas void of government surveillance or monitoring anymore. A big eye in the sky hovered almost everywhere in these parts. If it wasn’t the Feds, it was the damn looky-loo civilians trying to see with their own eyes if the myths were true and any actually existed. Either way, Harry held serious doubts about Clyde’s source of information.

“You sure Stan wasn’t drunk and making shit up again?” Harry remembered the last tall tale Stan told about Chupacabras migrating here up from Mexico. Clyde and Harry had yet to find one, leading Harry to believe Stan just liked to spin yarns.

“He was drunk, which is why I came and scouted last Thursday.” Clyde slid the bolt back on his rifle and placed one round in the chamber. “And they came, just like Stan said.”

The bolt slid home.

Excitement pulsed through Harry’s veins and over his skin, raising goose bumps. Clyde had actually seen them. In all their years of traveling and hunting, this was the first time either one of them had seen one of the mythic creatures they hunted. The possibility of success for the first time in so long was almost as exciting as the idea they might see aliens this evening.

“No shit.” Harry spat again, trying to remain calm.

Clyde kicked sand on it again and looked south across the Arizona wasteland. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

Sweat dripped off Harry’s forehead onto the lens of his scope. He wiped it away, raised his rifle and checked the sights. Still a bit blurry so he cleaned some more.

“I wish the climate were better,” Harry said. “Never thought I’d miss the rain and misery of Washington. This heat sucks.”

“It’s a desert,” Clyde said, still staring south. “What do you expect?”

Harry let the snide question pass. He looked south, too. “What range?”

“Three hundred yards. Nothing tough.”

Nope, Harry thought. He’d hit harder targets from further away.

“Here they come,” Clyde said.

“I thought they’d show up after dusk.”

“Nope.”

Harry raised his rifle and peered through the scope. Sure enough, there they were. A whole family.

“I count five,” Clyde said.

Harry saw only four. One older male, one female, and two kids. Where was the fifth?

“It’s a baby,” Clyde answered Harry’s unspoken question. “On the mother’s back.”

Harry looked again. He saw the baby now, strapped in a sack on its mother’s back. It bounced up and down as the mother raced with the rest of her family toward the border.

“How do you want to do this?” Harry said. “You should load more rounds.”

“I’ll take the mother and baby.”

“With one bullet?”

Clyde didn’t answer the question but asked his own, “Can you handle the rest?”

“I came, didn’t I?”

Harry sucked in a mouthful of air and exhaled slowly. When the last bit of breath escaped his lips, Harry squeezed the trigger.

The father took a head shot. Red mist hung in the air.

Harry ejected the spent casing and focused on the daughter.

Another head shot. Dust rose after her body had dropped to the ground.

Harry ejected the casing and shifted to the son.

Another head shot.

He checked his watch. Three kills in eight seconds.

Harry didn’t lower the rifle. Instead, he surveyed the scene with his scope. The entire family had decorated the desert floor with brain and blood.

“Told you I’d take care of the mom and baby,” Clyde said. “Right through mom’s throat and into the infant.”

Harry had trouble admitting it but the jealousy within him brewed toward Clyde. Sure, three kills in eight seconds was good. An all time best for Harry. But two kills with one shot rarely came along, especially with a breed this rare.

“Well,” Clyde said, “Shall we collect our trophies?”

Harry lowered the rifle, still jealous, and nodded. He looked to the west and fixed his gaze on a towering, partially constructed fence. It stood there, a monument to security and the signal that days like this would soon be extinct, just like the prey they hunted. Soon it would be connected to its counterpart several miles east of where they stood and the border would officially close. The days of hunting aliens would end.

“It’ll be a damn shame when they finish that fence,” Harry said.

Clyde spat and nodded his head. He made no effort to cover it with sand.

“Hunting Aliens” first appeared at HorrorLibrary.net August 2006

Erik Williams is a twenty-nine-year-old writer who lives with his wife in Southern California. To pay the bills, he holds down a day job as a government contractor. Since October, 2005, he’s found homes for his work at Black Ink Horror, Dark Recesses Press, GUD, and other small press venues. Like all writers, he’s at work on a novel.