(Waverly, North Dakota)
It’s night on a small farm in Waverly. An old wooden house resides near a windmill, inside of which boils a pot on an old stove. A young girl, LeeLee, carries a bowl of food through the house, carefully avoiding empty bottles of booze liberally scattered around the place. As she steps onto the porch, she sees what appears to be a flaming meteorite crash into the woods nearby. She drops the bowl and runs towards it, seeing that it’s actually some sort of craft with the alpha-numeric X17 painted on the side. She hides behind some branches when she sees Sweeney’s truck pull up.
“My gawd,” he exclaims to himself as he exits the car, shotgun in hand. “Gawd, gawd, gawd…” Slowly he approaches the crash site. He notices something moving down to his right and walks towards it. It’s barely human in form and burnt beyond recognition. As he points his shotgun at it, an eye opens and claws snikt from its hand. Sweeney jumps back, startled, firing the shotgun into the ground as he does so. Another shot goes off in panic before he rushes back to his truck and drives off. LeeLee takes a look at what Sweeney was so afraid off and heads back to the stable.
Inside the house, her father, Horace, staggers around calling her name. A bottle of booze resides comfortably in his hand. He notices the bowl of food that LeeLee dropped when she saw the flame and shouts that she better get her butt back there. LeeLee grabs her horse and returns to the crash site, finding Wolverine still lying there, severely injured.
At the sheriff’s office, the portly sheriff is on the blower to Mose, who says he saw some sort of airplane crash. Sweeney appears at his door. He’s not the brightest bulb in the box, and when he tries to explain that he’s seen aliens, the sheriff is a little skeptical. Sweeney tells him that there was a spaceship and an alien with three eyes and foot-long claws. It tried to cut him, stuff him and eat his brains for its Martian thanksgiving. Resigned to following up the story, the sheriff says he’ll get his keys. Sweeney adds the he reckons the aliens are coming for the Buchmans. The sheriff always said they were freaks.
LeeLee has somehow managed to bring Wolverine back to the stable on her horse. She is unafraid of him, despite his burnt appearance. She even squeezes a small lump on his temple, causing puss to spurt from it. Wolverine mumbles incoherently. She squeezes a cloth bathed in water and tends to his injuries, as the scrawny farm animals look on, oblivious.
Back in the woods, the sheriff sees for himself that Sweeney wasn’t lying. The craft is still there, and making a hissing sound. Sweeney notices that the alien he saw is no longer there. He freaks out, claiming that they’ll need a posse, guns, nukes. He asks the sheriff if he has a bazooka. The sheriff asks him to relax as they climb back in his patrol car. He wants to head up to the Buchman place. As they leave, the ‘spaceship’ begins to click into life, glowing and beeping as it stirs.
Soon, they are at the Buchmans house, and Horace answers the door, asking the sheriff what the hell he wants. The sheriff says there’s no need to catch attitude with him, and Horace apologizes, explaining that he hasn’t been feeling himself lately. The sheriff reckons he must have seen the crash just over the hill, and figures there must’ve been someone who survived. “Something!” interjects Sweeney. There were tracks heading to Horace’s place. Horace says he can search around if he likes.
The two men do not enter the house, but instead the sheriff looks down and sees something suspicious. He decides to leave, taking Sweeney with him. Back in the patrol car, Sweeney can’t believe he’s gonna let Horace get away with this. The sheriff replies that these things need to be handled carefully. He wasn’t there in ’99. This is dangerous business, and he prays the Buchmans aren’t involved.
Back in the stable, Wolverine takes a swig of water from a jug, but splutters as the liquid hits his still-healing throat. LeeLee says that Logan’s just a man. Logan replies that it’s the nicest thing he can remember anybody ever saying to him. He lies down again, as LeeLee places a wet cloth on his forehead. Logan asks where she got the shiner. LeeLee changes the subject, instead asking if Hydra did this. “Come again?” asks Logan. LeeLee tells him he was talking in his sleep about Hydra. She knows what a Hydra is - a beast with lots of heads. Logan replies that she’s a lot smarter than he is. He explains that a couple of months back, he had to stop a bad man who was connected to other bad men calling themselves Hydra. Their robot snatched him up right off the street. By the time he pulled the plug, they were way up.
(flashback)
Wolverine hangs on to a large Hydra robot high in the atmosphere that fires thousands of rounds from its weapons. It reels from his assault as he slashes at it with his claws.
(present)
Logan looks up at LeeLee and asks her again to tell him about that shiner. Before she can answer, a heavy boom rocks the stable. LeeLee rushes outside, concerned for her father and calling his name. She stops between the stable and the house, horrified, as a massive Hydra robot walks through the farm, grabbing a tractor in its massive grip and hurling it into the barn. Horace fires at it with his shotgun, but it’s an exercise in futility. LeeLee rushes to her father’s chest as the robot begins to crush the barn and everything inside.
As it demolishes the weak wooden structure, Logan’s claws appear through the hay, and he leaps at the robot, trying to put it out of action once and for all. He is unceremoniously dumped to the ground, and Horace asks who the hell it is. Is it the spaceman? He asks LeeLee if she knows that the sheriff is looking for him, and what they’ll do to them if they find out he’s there. He raises his hand. “What would your mother say?” he cries, “You horrible brat.” Logan looks on, dazed, before passing out.
In town, customers at a bar are discussing the evening’s events. The sheriff asks for a posse, and the guys ask for more beer. One man in a long green raincoat exits the bar and heads over to a vehicle with several men inside. He leans into the window and informs them that there is a rumor about a spaceman hiding out at a farm outside of town. The local sheriff is getting a posse together and they’re all inside trying to drink up some courage. The driver replies that he guesses they can do their civic duty. They can’t have a spaceman running loose can they? He is sporting a Hydra ring.
(later)
Logan is in bed and LeeLee asks if he’s going to keep getting better. “It’s my curse,” replies Logan. She informs him that the robot’s dead. She had Horace use the truck to push it the rest of the way down under the barn. They tried to cover it up, but it’s not a very good job. Logan replies that Hydra will track the robot. She has to leave. LeeLee tells him that there’s nowhere to go, and Horace can’t travel. Logan asks if this Horace is her dad. Sometimes, LeeLee replies. He asks if Horace hits her. LeeLee says it’s not his fault. He’s had a hard time since they shot mama. Logan asks who ‘they’ are.
LeeLee explains that she means the townies. They think they’re evil freaks. She explains that her mama was born with a tumor, like a twin, but all messed up. They cut it off but everybody knew about it. Horace’s family owned the farm, and everybody thought he was a freak, too, because the animals were always being born different. After they married and came to live at the farm, mama’s tumor started growing again. Eventually she couldn’t leave the basement. She continues to say that her mama had thirteen children. Twelve of them were born messed up and the doc put them in the bath. She was the thirteenth. They couldn’t find anything wrong with her. The doc said she must be rotten on the inside, like the devil’s child. The doc tried putting her into the bath like the others, and that’s when mama got real mad… After, the sheriff and a whole lot of men came with guns. Mama killed two of them before the sheriff shot her.
Horace appears and informs her that a posse is coming. LeeLee asks him to make them go away and not to say anything. Logan picks up on Horace’s scent; something like gangrene. Something’s not right.
Horace answers the door and finds the sheriff standing there with many of the bar’s customers, all armed. He asks what’s going on. He told the sheriff he’d send word if he found out anything. The sheriff replies that he doesn’t believe him. Their place is a blight on the whole town, and he wants to search it. Horace says that they aren’t causing any trouble, but the sheriff asks him to stand aside. “What happened to your barn, Horace?” he enquires.
Meanwhile, Logan wanders down the staircase, with LeeLee following him, telling him to come back or he’ll make things worse. Logan notices a tendril attached to Horace’s back. He follows the tendril down into the basement with LeeLee at his side. There, over her skeleton, he discovers LeeLee’s mama; an abominable creature that appears to have mutated into something entirely inhuman. LeeLee explains that, when the sheriff shot her, they thought she was dead, but the other part kept on growing. She’s real big now, and LeeLee has found her out as far as the barn. She can’t really eat, so she’s attached herself to Horace, and he does most of that for her. She’s really angry about everything. Horace drinks to keep her calm, but if he sleeps too long, it’ll get bad. If they find her mama, they’ll kill them all.
Back at the doorway, Horace is asked to stand aside, but instead he pulls out his shotgun and aims it at the sheriff. He tells them they don’t know what they’re doing, and she wants them to leave. The sheriff aims his pistol at Horace and warns him not to do it.
Fortunately for everyone, Logan appears in the doorway and asks everyone to relax. Nobody wants this to get ugly. He explains that he’s their spaceman, only he ain’t from space. He’s a U.S. military pilot. The robot is a classified prototype that he was testing. He crashed, and these good people saved his life. The sheriff asks if he can prove this. Logan replies that he if he leaves these folks alone, he’ll come down to the station and they can clear all this up.
The posse look at him, and it seems that this might be allowed to happen. However, the man in the green coat from the bar clicks something on his weapon which makes a humming sound. Logan picks up on this and snikts all six claws. He then leaps at the man, asking everyone to get back. He takes out the gunman, but another uses a hi-tech weapon to fire at Logan. LeeLee tugs at her father’s arm to get him out of there as a major fight breaks out. One of the agents calls in all units. Sweeney blasts one of the Hydra agents, calling them damn stinkin’ aliens.
Nearby, a Hydra craft descends and a squad of agents rappel to the ground. Sweeney begins shooting aimlessly. “You won’t get me!” he screams, “You won’t get me you filthy aliens!” The sheriff orders him to stop, but instead Sweeney takes aim at Horace and blasts him in the chest. LeeLee screams as her father falls onto the stoop. The tendril attaching him to his wife is severed, and Sweeney asks the sheriff if he saw that, too. In the basement, mama screams. As Horace lies dying, he speaks to LeeLee; wanting reassurance that she knows he loved her. “You tried Horace,” she replies.
Logan sees several Hydra agents approaching, all heavily armed. He tells LeeLee to run when this starts. From the basement, mama screams again, and her tendrils erupt from the basement, knocking most of the posse and Hydra agents to the ground. She then uses her tendrils to attack them; piercing their bodies and mutilating everyone in sight, apart from Logan and her daughter. Shots ring out, but they make little difference. Sweeney is killed by a tendril that slices right though his skull. Mama then emerges from the basement and stands around Logan and her daughter, as if protecting them from harm. LeeLee calls for her mama to stop it, or she swears she’ll hate her forever. Mama suddenly ceases her attack, leaving only the pair of them alive. The place is in ruins.
(later)
Logan digs a hole for LeeLee’s mama’s skeleton to be buried in. Mama has disappeared, possibly into a water main that Logan found which empties into the river. He tells LeeLee that she would have to be tracked down and captured. LeeLee knows that without the farm, or herself, or Horace that her mama will die. Logan tells her that he will take her to people who will take care of her. LeeLee doesn’t know about that. She’s been taking care of herself for as long as she can remember. But, with no house or barn, no tractor or goat, what else is she gonna do?
