The first bodies fall from the sky before most of Ankeny has finished its morning coffee.
Mike Spencer is a high-school history teacher, a husband of twenty years, and the father of a sixteen-year-old wrestler who has inherited his talent for turning every conversation into an argument. On an ordinary Iowa winter morning, Mike should be worrying about a driveway buried beneath drifting snow, students doing donuts in an icy parking lot, and whether the district should have canceled school.
His wife, Nikki, should be enjoying an unexpected day away from work with coffee, wine, and an empty house.
Their son, Hunter, should be thinking about wrestling practice.
None of them should be watching strangers descend into their neighborhood beneath white parachutes.
The newcomers do not arrive like soldiers. They wear thin jumpsuits and hospital gowns, speak in languages the neighbors cannot understand, and carry countdown devices strapped to their wrists. When the timers reach zero, every parachutist collapses into the snow.
Then they rise again.
Their skin turns corpse pale. Hair falls from their heads. Blood fills their eyes and leaks from their ears. Their teeth begin clicking together as if hunger has replaced every other human instinct.
The people of Ankeny call them clickers.
The clickers do not care about subzero temperatures, broken bones, shattered windows, or wounds that would stop a living person. They run. They climb. They follow noise. Most of all, they eat.
