The title of Abbey Mei Otis’ first story collection may sound like a cross between a tabloid headline and a cheap horror movie, but Otis actually belongs with writers like Kelly Link, who freely borrow genre materials to construct elegant literary fictions far more about character than spectacle. The title story does involve a virus from outer space that escapes a secret government lab and begins transforming people in a neighboring town, but the focus is on the young narrator and her little brother coping with radical changes over which they have no control. The aliens that show up in other stories are more often benign than hostile. In one, they bring us advanced technology, but are oddly fascinated by watching teenagers fight or supermarket clerks work. In another tale, a 6-year-old befriends an insectlike creature, only to lose her best friend because of anti-alien bigotry.