by Kevin Jusino
I don’t finish the sentence, too scared to confirm my fears. He doesn’t reply, and a silent understanding passes between us; some horrors are best left unspoken.
“Where can we go?” I whisper. “There’s nowhere safe anymore.”
I hear him let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s people that found some way to make it through this mess. Maybe we’re the only ones being affected, and there’s other parts of the world that are fine.”
It’s not exactly a reassuring answer, but I wouldn’t expect a lie to be anymore convincing.
“I guess we’ll find out,” I say.
“Guess so.”
I hear him shift in his bed and watch him turn on his side, facing away from me and towards the gate. I wonder if I shouldn’t have asked him anything—shouldn’t have reminded him of all the terrible things he must’ve gone through these past two weeks. Selfishly, I want to keep talking to him—find some way to fill this empty silence—but I stop myself.
I try to get comfortable on my own mattress and stare up at the grey cement-ceiling, wondering what else floats outside the stone, high up in the sky. Maybe the aliens are looking down at me, right at this very moment, and I don’t even know it.
Somehow, the thoughts lull me back into sleep.
Clang! Clang!
I jerk awake, heart thumping in my throat as the noises continue to reverberate though the air. My friends groan and rise to attention around me, Henry and Martin already on their feet, while Cacy shakes a still-sleeping Rachel and Corey awake.
“What’s going on?” I ask to no one in particular, rising to my feet.
The warehouse is still dark, so it must not yet be morning. How much longer have I been asleep?
“That was the gate,” Martin answers, staring at the metal barricade.
CLANG!
This time, the sound is much louder, as if whatever is on the other side of that gate is getting more forceful. Angrier.
Cacy gasps. “Is someone trying to get in?”
I feel a warm hand clasp around mine and look down to see Corey huddled at my side, staring at the gate with wide, fearful eyes. The other inhabitants of the warehouse have begun a chorus of fearful chatter, no one brave enough to investigate the source of the noise.
Henry turns to me. “Zoey?”
It takes me a few seconds before I spot his gaze continuously flickering back-and-forth between me and my backpack, and I immediately understand what he means. With one swoop, I grab it and clutch it tightly to my chest, a gesture of anticipation just in case whatever is out there manages to get in.
And do what?, I wonder.
Clang! Clang! CLANG!
I jump this time, my blood beating loudly in my ears.
For a single, horrible minute, there is nothing but silence. No one can do anything but stare in mesmerized terror at the gate, which now shakes slightly from the impacts.
And then the silence is over.
A horrible, creaking sound that sounds like the cry of a million dying creatures all mixed into one dreadful noise spreads through the space, stinging my ears and rocking my skull. A gust of cold night air shoots through the building, chilling my skin and raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
I find the source of the noise: impossibly, it’s the gate itself.
It’s being peeled away from the bottom left corner. Somehow, something is slowly lifting it up, bending the screeching metal. The human screeching follows, and the next few moments flash by in a complete whir of chaos and unintelligible noise.
The crowd starts surging towards the opposite exit door, all flocking from the front of the warehouse and right towards us. A burst of panic takes ahold of my chest, and all I can do is stare at the frightened horde, not sure whether I should point my attention at the monster outside or the dozens of people that are about to trample me.
Martin makes the choice for me, grabbing my arm and pulling me alongside him and the others as we scramble for the exit like all the others. I hear screams behind me, and don’t know whether it’s from someone whose fallen, or something worse.
I think Henry is shouting something, but I can’t hear what he says over the ringing in my ears and the frightened voices of those around me. As the crowd condenses into one concentrated circle of panic, I start losing track of where everyone is. There’s a glimpse of Cacy and Corey here, a flash of Rachel’s blonde hair there, a hint of Henry’s large figure in the distance. It doesn’t take long for me to get lost.
BAM!
A gunshot—from who or where, I don’t know. The screams rise in volume and people start pushing and shoving. Someone slams into my shoulder and the loss of balance makes me trip over my own feet, sending me sprawling to the floor. A heel catches the back of my neck on the way down and I cry out in pain, a constellation of stars flashing in my vision from the impact.
It all comes back into focus when I hear the distinct sound of a metal object clattering on the tile floor. My backpack’s gone, having flown out of my grip from the fall. On my knees, I start crawling along the floor blindly, people jumping and scooting around me as I search for the only thing that could keep me alive now.
My fingers catch a strap, and then another, and I pull it towards me, immediately stuffing a hand into the pocket but finding nothing but smashed-up food and dented water bottles. The gun is gone.
“Zoey!”
Cacy’s voice rings out apart from the others, a lifeline in a sea of murderous waves. I turn around, searching for her desperately, before I feel her hands on my shoulders, lifting me up.
“We have to go!” she says, raising her voice.
“The-the gun,” I gasp. “I lost it!”
BAM! BAM!
She snaps her gaze towards the gate, and her eyes go wide with fear. “Forget the gun, we have to go!”
Before I can resist, she’s pulling me through the crowd and we’re slipping through shoulders and towards the door, startled yelps and screams following us all the way. The edges of my vision go dark and I remember to keep breathing, my gut clenched with the loss of our only weapon.
Stupid. Shouldn’t have let it go. Stupidstupidstupid.
“Through here!” Cacy shouts.
The door isn’t large enough. People slam into the walls and get pushed aside as we’re funnel out the small opening like vermin scurrying away from a fire. I have to fight to keep myself from being pulled under the pressure again, beads of sweat running down my forehead and into my eyes, blinding me. The only thing that pulls me in the right direction is Cacy.
We’re outside before I can suck in another deep breath, the chilly night air biting at the exposed skin on my palms. I don’t even remember passing through the door, only recalling bits and pieces of images. The thought occurs to me that I might’ve kept my eyes closed the whole time.
“The others?” I say, out of breath. “Where are they?”
It doesn’t take long for both of us to spot them huddled at the end of the alleyway opposite us.
We run to them, along with all the other escapees. I’m not sure where they’re going—most have turned right rather than left, towards the road. Maybe back to their homes, or to another shelter we don’t know about. There’s no time to think about it.
“Zoey, what’s happening?” a frightened, teary-eyed Corey asks me once we approach.
I stare at him, my mouth open to speak, but no words arrive to comfort him. The only thing I can say is, “I don’t know.”
Rachel sits in a ball against the wall, hugging her legs tightly. “A monster,” she whispers shakily. “It’s a monster.”
No one says anything different. What was that thing?
“I lost the gun,” I say, looking at the rest.
Henry curses under his breath, but Martin’s expression remains unchanged.
“We’ll go to my place,” he says.
“Is it safe?” Cacy asks.
BAM! BAM!
This time, the nosies sound less like
gunshots and something far different. Far more frightening. More screams erupt from the exit alongside it.
“Safer than here,” he replies, eyes glued to the warehouse.
Rachel is the first to say, “Let’s leave this place.”
No one disagrees with her.
I take Corey’s hand in mine, and walk next to Martin as the rest follow behind us. Armed with nothing but the army knife Martin gave to me this morning, I’ve never felt more exposed. I almost laugh to myself, realizing just how screwed we are: alone, in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night, with some type of beast right on our heels and no way to protect ourselves.
I’m starting to wonder if we’d have been better off staying in those buses.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE NIGHT IS far too loud.
We’re not the only ones headed back into the heart of the city, as some of the others from the warehouse have joined the path as well. Some of them have injuries—probably from being trampled in the panicked herd, like I was—while others shout names, looking for people they have lost in the chaos.
I wince at every noise, worried that they will draw the creature towards us. I don’t even know what it was that attacked the warehouse—it could’ve been raiders, the people who took us from our homes, maybe even a figment of my imagination—but that’s all I can picture in my mind. A monster.
I can only hope that my imagination is wrong.
“How far is it?” Henry asks.
We’ve only been walking for a few minutes, so the turmoil from before is still fresh in our minds.
“Probably twenty, thirty minutes on foot,” Martin replies, still watchful of everything around us. “Towards the outskirts of the city, so we’ll have to keep a careful eye out. Rent was too high downtown. I can’t picture that the people there will be as…contained as those in the areas we went to yesterday. ”
“You mean they’re bad guys?” Corey ask, shuffling his feet next to me.
Martin sighs and runs a hand through his messy hair. “I guess you could say that.”
“I wonder why you didn’t you tell us before?” Rachel says, stroking her hair nervously. “That you had a place. That certainly would have been an important factor when we were deciding whether or not to leave the warehouse.”
“Well we’re definitely not staying there now,” Martin says, clenching his jaw. He stares straight ahead, not saying anything for a while, before letting out a long sigh. “I didn’t want to go back,” he says. “Even if just for a little while. I wanted to get as far away from this city as possible, honestly. Even…even before they came.”
No one says anything else, but I let his words stay in my mind. I wonder what else this stranger, the boy who wanted to be a superhero, has yet to tell me. Briefly, I wonder if we should be trusting him so wholly like this, but I let the thought slip away.
Now is no time for paranoia. Besides, what would he have to gain? From the looks of it, he’s in the same boat as us.
Clearing his throat, Martin continues, “Anyway, we should be good there for a day or two. I boarded it up pretty well before coming to the warehouse, but there’s no guarantee that it hasn’t been broken into already. If not, I have some supplies that’ll be useful.”
“Weapons?” Henry asks.
Martin nods. “Weapons.”
Corey looks up at me. “And food?”
“And food,” Martin answers, a small smile on his lips. “Well, some, at least. But—”
CRASH!
We all stop so quickly I’m surprised I don’t hear the sound of skidding. I scan my eyes everywhere, trying to find the source of the sound, before I realize I’m looking in the wrong direction. High above our heads in one of the buildings that seems to scrape the clouds—only a few blocks away—I spot shards of dark glass falling to the ground.
Then the same happens to the floor underneath it, and the next, until a blizzard of the small pieces showers the streets.
“What the hell?” Henry mutters.
The roar comes next. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before; a mixture of a lion’s shout paired with the wailing squeal of a dying bull. It’s pain, power, and fear all combined into one terrifying sound.
And I know that my imagination was not lying to me.
“It’s the monster,” Rachel says, sounding on the verge of tears. “There’s more than one.”
Screams erupt from behind us, and I whip around to see an entire wall from a two-story building explode. Stone and brick fall onto the road, raining down on those underneath. Another strange, guttural, unnatural sound erupts from within the building, and I know things are about to get a whole lot worse.
“Run!” Martin shouts.
He doesn’t have to tell us twice—Rachel and Cacy are already a few steps ahead. In unison we dive towards the sidewalks, hoping the buildings can provide some shelter.
“They’re everywhere,” Henry huffs, his hands clenched into fists.
“We don’t know how many there are yet,” I say, eyes glued to the building with the crumbled wall.
Cacy shakes her head. “Let’s not find out, please.”
I turn to Martin. “Can we still make it to your place without running into those things?”
He pauses, thinking it over before saying, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“How about this: are our chances of survival best when going to your place, or away from this city?” Rachel asks.
Martin sucks in a deep breath, eyes flickering back and forth between the center of the city and the suburbs, and in the distance, the forest.
All notions of returning back home have been wiped from my mind. I don’t even have time to feel sad about it.
CRASH!
Another building destroyed, this one from farther downtown.
“It looks like they’re targeting places with the highest population,” Martin says. “The city is no place to be right now. We should move towards the outskirts for now. Maybe…maybe we can somehow work ourselves around the city, or even go into the woods.”
I shrug. “At this point, anything that takes us away from those things sounds good.”
Cacy and Rachel nod. Henry looks slightly less convinced, but says nothing. Either way, he’s been outvoted.
“Follow me,” Martin says, pushing off from the building and jogging across the street.
As we join him on the other side, I look back at the building with the destroyed wall. People still crowd around it, helping those who were wounded from the debris rise to their feet. What’s worse, some of the bodies lay in the rubble, unmoving, and my stomach flips with unease. Just before my line of sight is broken as we enter another alleyway, I spot a flash of shadow from within the building. It’s enough to make out the shape of something very, very tall. Something beastly.
As we enter the alley, there’s another chorus of screams.
I don’t turn back again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WE AREN’T THE only ones running.
They come out of their homes, out of buildings, out of their own forms of shelter as we move away from the city, the sounds of chaos filling the cold night air. Deep in the distance, I can see the flicker of orange flames flickering at the base of the tall buildings.
I think we made the right choice.
We don’t talk to anyone else, don’t even dare to look. Some of them are alone, weary-eyed and frightened, only sparing us a quick glance before walking past. Others travel in groups like us, all huddled close together, keeping as much distance as possible between us and them. There are families, too. Seeing the children is the worst part.
A couple of them walk towards the city, perhaps unaware of the horrors that reside within—I want to scream at them to turn back, yells at them to save themselves. Whatever it is that’s attacking hasn’t been choosy, however, since a few of the buildings we pass by on the outskirts are just as destroyed as the others.
Which means there’s still a chance we may cross paths
with one of those bloodthirsty beasts.
Still, we carry on. After all, it’s not like we have much else of a choice. There’s danger within both paths: it’s only a matter of deciding which one has a better possibility of us getting killed.
Great, I’m starting to think like Rachel now.
I wish I had Mom here with me now. She’d know just the right thing to say, just the right thing to do to make me feel better. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the truth, or only be a temporary distraction from our troubles, but it’s something. It’s better than this crushing, fear-filled silence. Besides giving out directions or warnings, there hasn’t been much talk between any of us.
Corey presses himself close to me—he’s been glued to my arm for the past hour—as we reach a large, destroyed intersection. Two street lamps have completely collapsed, spread across the street to form a steel x. The corner of one of the buildings—a small pottery shop—is crumbled and torn to pieces. Shivers run down my spine as I spot what looks like claw marks on the upper level, like a great monster had raked its nails across the surface.
This is from something not of our world.
Cacy clears her throat and steps in front of me, blocking the ghastly sight from Corey’s view. I thank her silently in my head.
“We’ll go left,” Martin says, eyeing the rubble.
We follow him, our path lit by the full moon. I can only imagine how much more frightening adventures like this will be when the night sky is no longer so bright. Other than discarded lamps and even the occasional burn barrel, there’s nothing else to keep us from tripping over our own feet—I’d take out our flashlight, but batteries are scarce and I’d rather not make ourselves a clear target for whatever it is that’s tearing up the city.
That’s not the only thing we have to worry about, though. Our fellow human-beings prove to be capable of just as much destruction as those things.
We hear gunshots pierce the air, disrupting the night. Each time I hear their distinctive pop, I feel the temperature reduce another five degrees. I can only hope those bullets are aimed at the invaders, and not at other people.
