by Eddie Patin
Watching the creature sitting up on the corner of the white, concrete building, Chad thought of gargoyles...
It was like a gargoyle, except without wings. And with a weird insectoid head!
Hell—even its skin looked like it was made of stone!
“There’s another,” Santos said, pointing with a gloved finger.
Chad saw a second monster climbing up the building. This one had an extra set of arms—four in total—extending from under the main ones. Its stony skin was mottled grey and sandy, and its mouth and all four hands were bright red with blood!
“That one’s got four arms!”
“Holy shit,” Santos replied. “Let’s get out of here!”
Chad led the two of them to the main entrance, obvious because of the round-about that dumped visitors in front of the towering headquarters building. The Geneva soldier shook his head to himself as they passed the statue of the knotted gun.
“What the hell is that?” Santos asked. “That’s ridiculous...”
“The statue?” Chad asked. “Looks stupid, but I think it has to do with reducing gun violence maybe?”
“I bet they think it does,” Santos said.
“It’s a worthy goal,” Chad replied as they walked. “Guns kill people all the time.”
“That’s bullshit,” Santos said as they stepped through the gate toward the throngs of people in the street.
Chad found himself staring up at the skyscrapers around him as he stepped down onto 1st Avenue. All of the cars and taxi cabs were sitting dead and abandoned. Many of the people near the entrance to the complex half-heartedly carried signs protesting Portal Zero, but their energy was focused elsewhere—they stood and murmured to each other and stared to the ... what direction was that?
“Why do you say tha—” Chad began.
His foot plunged into water, and Chad gasped, looking down at the street.
It wasn’t raining, but the street outside the UEA complex was a few inches deep with water that ran in his direction steadily from up ahead. He looked down at the ripples of the constant flow, pushing water at them from around the huge, red building on the other side of the street.
A continual flood of water ran through the streets, over pavement, between care tires, overwhelming the sewer system, eventually colliding with the curb to the UEA complex, diverting in both directions from his foot...
Random people in the street—normal folks along with the throngs of protesters—were making their way in the direction of wherever the water was coming from...
“Holy cow,” Santos said from behind him. “Look at that water! It’s coming from ... the west! West by northwest.”
Chad pulled his foot out of the cold flow, shaking his shoe, looking back at the soldier.
“How do you know it’s west?”
The man held up his wristwatch. “I have a compass on my watch.”
“Does your watch work?”
Santos looked at it, then lowered his arm back to support his rifle.
“Nope. But the compass does. It’s just a little spinning compass in the band.”
“Huh,” Chad said, looking back at the steady flow of water from the west. He listened again to the constant roar of running water in the distance up ahead. “Where’s it coming from? A burst mainline or something?”
“Maybe,” Santos said. “Let’s go check it out. We’ve gotta go west anyway...”
“Why?”
“Well,” the soldier replied. “I haven’t been to Manhattan before, but I know it’s an island. And we’ve got to go west to get to the bridges back to the mainland!”
“Why do you want to go to the mainland?”
Santos smirked. “Come on, man,” he said. “I can tell you’re a little sheltered and all, but you’re not stupid, are ya? We’re in the middle of downtown New York after an EMP disaster! If the monsters don’t get us first, we sure don’t want to still be here when all of these people start eating each other...”
Following the soldier’s guidance, Chad did his best to stick to dry ground as they headed to the end of the block to the south, looking west, trying their best to avoid the water.
Before long, standing at the southern edge of the UEA complex, they saw what everyone was staring at...
Hovering in the air, several blocks away, next to the tallest building in the area—a reaching gothic pinnacle of white concrete topped with a sharp spire that pierced the sky—was a massive and rolling blue globe of ... water??
The swirling fluid orb undulated and rippled constantly, creating long, thin and spinning lines of clouds in the air around it, over a hundred feet in the air! It roared with the steady flow of water, dumping a huge waterfall of incomprehensible amounts of fluid into the streets below. Mist rose up from the torrent of crashing water in the intersection that was quickly shedding itself into the city all around it.
“Holy shit!” Santos said.
“Hey!” Chad called to a random man standing next to them. The man watched the watery spectacle in wonder.
Looking over, the man closed his mouth. “Yeah??” he said.
“What’s that?”
The man looked back. “Oh, that’s the Chrysler Building!” He spoke in a New York accent straight out of the movies.
“No, dude—what’s that water thing?!”
“Hey,” the man replied. “Hell if I know!”
8 - Tommy and Jody Shelton
Flagstaff, AZ
Tommy wiped the tears from his face and returned his arms to his sleeping sister, who clutched at him with grubby hands. The sound of his nylon parka shell scratched against her jacket as he laced his fingers together behind her back.
It was dark now.
The day had passed slowly with absurd breaks in concentration.
The boy lay on the lumpy ground amidst gravel and clumps of crab grass, the weeds poking at his legs and socks, holding his sister up against his body.
She was passed out now.
He thought about the last several hours.
At first, madness clawed at his mind when they sat there silently under the street, listening to the monsters eating the bodies of his dead parents just above them. Above Tommy’s head, a couple of feet worth of concrete, asphalt, and whatever else was all there was between him and his sister, and the wet, bloody masses of flesh and clothing that used to be Mom and Dad...
The boy listened to the beasts up above crunching, slurping, and pulling bones apart with their claws.
Sometimes, they talked to each other, like lions grunting over the body of a dead gazelle...
Or maybe they were telling each other to stay away from their respective meals.
Every once and a while, Tommy would hear the grinding of heavy claws on asphalt as one of the creatures sat up and roared with a splitting, metallic sound, shortly before seemingly breathing flames into the air!
The boy didn’t understand how, but he knew that the monsters were making fire somehow. Every time it happened, he saw the yellow flash at the edges of the road, and saw the air shimmer for a moment. He thought, once—or maybe he just imagined—that he could feel the heat, too...
It wasn’t long before his sister gave up on waiting it out and just went to sleep against his chest. She sank into a fitful nap that made her grimace and whine little grunts from time to time.
Eventually, Tommy drifted away, too.
When he opened his eyes and saw that they were still lying in the ditch under Sitgreaves and Dale, the boy cried.
It was real.
It didn’t feel real, but it really happened...
Just a little while ago, they were a family. Mom and Dad—his dad especially—were the center of his whole world! Tommy went to school, played computer games and painted pewter figurines, had a decent collection of Stephen King books, and this was the year he was going to go deer hunting with his father!
His eyes fell down to his backpack, sitting up against a chunk of concrete.
There was
an empty Diet Coke plastic bottle half-buried in the sand under his pack. A shard of green glass stuck out from the ground next to it.
His dad gave him his .22 revolver. That gun was still in his backpack, wrapped up safely in his robot shirt.
Tommy loved his dad.
And he loved his mom, too, even though she always took Jody’s side. Tommy still loved to lie up against his mother when they watched a movie; yearned for her to brush her fingers along his temple and his bangs during the quiet moments...
Tommy cried then, thinking about his parents, and fell in and out of sleep over the rest of the afternoon.
Hours later, once when he was awake, the boy realized that the monsters were gone.
When he thought about waking Jody; imagined getting them moving again and up and out of the tunnel...
Tommy closed his eyes again.
He didn’t want to head up to the street and see what was left of his parents...
At one point, later in the afternoon, he and Jody were startled awake when the monstrous beast roared again somewhere off in the distance. Not like the gargoyle things that killed Mom and Dad. This was the big one. The huge creature’s voice shook the air and caused concrete dust and other small bits of road to settle down onto Tommy and his sister from the ceiling of the culvert.
Jody’s eyes snapped awake, looking up at her brother with huge, white fear. A long and high whine seeped out from her lips, and her small fingers clamped down onto Tommy’s sides.
He pulled her head into his chest and tried to calm her down.
“Shhh,” Tommy whispered. “It’s okay, Jody. It’s far away. You hear? It’s not by us.”
She looked up.
“The others stay near it, Tommy. They’re gonna come back and eat us!”
“No, they won’t,” Tommy replied. “Cause we’re gonna be quiet. They’re already gone. It’s far away. Go back to sleep...”
And she did.
At least, Tommy hoped they stayed around the big one...
It made sense.
When the giant monster was on the strip and started the fire, it wasn’t long before they heard one of them running across the roof of the house.
And Tommy did see that other one in the street yesterday...
Was it just yesterday? he thought. Yesterday he was playing Minecraft and eating stroganoff...
He thought it was a dog. Just seeing things...
And just before the three creatures killed Mom and Dad and Zack and his family, they did hear the giant one just down the street again...
It had roared, huge and distant, from down Dale Street.
Tommy hadn’t even seen the big one yet. He supposed that the police officer at the door, dressed in dark blue and talking to Dad earlier today, had seen it. The cops were trying to fight it...
The boy hoped that he would never see it.
Was it just the giant monster and the three smaller ones?
Were there more?
And what about the high school? Tommy gathered from the conversation between Dad and the cop that people were going to live in the high school since the fire was going to burn up all of their houses.
Was it still safe?
When Zack and his mom and dad ran to the high school to get away from the monsters, the one with the four arms chased them down. Tommy knew that Mr. Jackson and Zack were both dead. He didn’t know if Mrs. Jackson made it or not. But Zack was killed in the street within a block from the school!
Did the four-armed monster head to the school from there? Eat everybody up?
Dad’s bullets just sparked on their skin—were the monsters invincible? Would they be able to just run around through all of the families in the school, eating them all up and breathing fire, while everyone just screamed and ran?
Would they set the school on fire??
Tommy clenched his eyes shut to try and quiet his brain. There were too many crazy thoughts bouncing around in there, and he knew that he was just going to keep freaking out the more he thought about it...
There had to be more...
The whole town was in trouble...
“Stop it,” Tommy whispered to himself.
He looked out of the tunnel at the grass that grew thickly around the water that seeped along in tiny erosion streams through the gravel and trash. The taller weeds swayed in the breeze. The minimal creek that ran through the ditch, just beyond his shoes, was so small and gentle that it didn’t make any noise—not even a trickle.
Tommy was worried about seeing the dead pieces of Mom and Dad and Zack. He worried about Jody seeing that terrible mess. But they wouldn’t have to climb up to the street and go that way—the creek would lead them straight to the high school. They’d come out just across the street from the corner of the huge place.
Tommy looked down at his sister’s face. Her eyes were clenched shut, and frown lines twisted her small, pale features.
Poor Jody, he thought.
So little...
“Jody,” he whispered, shaking her shoulders.
He expected for her to wake with a whine, still crying, but the little girl merely opened her eyes and looked clearly into his. The green pools of her irises were rich and deep in the dim light.
“Is it time to move?” she asked with a small voice.
“Yeah,” Tommy replied, looking over her face again. Had she been laying there awake? “You okay?”
Jody sat up and kicked her little feet out into the gravel. She sniffed once and rubbed her eyes.
They were so dirty from sliding across the edge of the street and crawling around down here.
“I’m okay, Tommy,” she said, moving into a crouch, then standing up as much as she could under the arched, low ceiling. The gravel crunched under her little shoes.
“Get your backpack on,” he said. “We’re going to walk to the grown-ups at the school.”
Tommy rolled over and started crawling through the grass and wet silt toward the open sky to the northwest. He pulled his backpack along with him. The boy felt a piece of debris stab him in the knee, and he gasped, settling his leg somewhere else.
Jody sniffed behind him.
When Tommy’s head emerged from the culvert into the open air, he felt better and scared at the same time. With a sigh and a big sniff of the air outside the tunnel, the boy noticed that he didn’t smell the burning-paper odor of the fire as strongly anymore.
Or was he just getting used to it?
He stood, popping his back and stretching his legs, and pulled his backpack straps up over his shoulders. After a few moments of watching the wind blow through the thick, drooping tree branches hanging all around the ditch and the bike path, Tommy realized that Jody was still in the culvert.
Tommy crouched and turned back.
His little sister had taken a knee back in the tunnel, holding her backpack with one hand, and was staring out from the darkness at him, her brow contorted in concern and her mouth small. Jody’s long, straight hair fluttered just a little in the wind...
“Jody?”
She stayed quiet, staring out at him from their hiding spot. Tommy couldn’t quite tell, but her eyes glistened a little, and it looked like she might be about to cry.
He lowered to one knee and swayed in toward the culvert a little, steadying himself with one hand against its concrete edge.
“Jody what is it?” he asked.
“Tommy...” she said weakly, her voice just a whisper.
“It’s ... it’s okay, Jody,” he said. “We’re not going up there. We’ll go another way.”
“Mommy and Daddy are up there,” she responded.
She sniffed.
Tommy listened, and other than the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees all around them, and the sounds of his own breathing and his sister, all was quiet.
“Come here,” he said. “It’s okay, we’re going that way.” He pointed over his shoulder to where the ditch continued across the block to the northwest.
E
ventually, she stumbled out of the culvert on uncertain feet, halfway between crawling and crouching. When Jody stood, her pink backpack brushed up against the concrete wall just outside the tunnel.
The two of them set out through the ditch, quietly stepping through the thick grasses and weeds, their shoes crunching on gravel, the occasional pieces of glass, and old, muddy packaging. Tommy soon thought about climbing up to the bike path, but something about being down in the ditch in the dark, the many heavy branches of the droopy trees looming over them, made him feel safer.
Once the culvert was out of sight, Tommy felt like those strange, alien eyes were watching him; multiple beady, little eyes all perched around the rims of otherworldly jaws splashed with his parents’ blood.
The boy moved faster, and Jody fell behind, so he took her hand and pulled her through the whispering darkness.
The large trees hovering over them cast the children into deep shadows, and Tommy watched the horizon in front. He couldn’t see anything up ahead, since the dark blue sky had long since bruised to black, and the boy was hoping that at any moment, he’d see the glow of the high school appear through the murk...
But he knew that the power was out, and the school would be dark, too.
When the breeze started to make his face cold and numb, he was glad that he didn’t decide to spend the night in the tunnel!
He thought of the folded blankets they were carrying.
They were back in the streets, back where they were attacked...
“Tommy, I’m cold.”
“I know, Jody. Me too. We’ll be there soon...”
Hiking through the ditch all the way to the opposite corner of the block felt like it took forever, but eventually, Tommy led his sister to what looked like another culvert passing under the far corner where the ditch crossed under streets again—a double culvert, separated into two tunnels by a supporting cement divider wall.
In the darkness of night, Tommy could barely make out the shadow of a chain link fence above the concrete edges, and the hulking forms of school buses parked on the side of the street above.
He stopped and shushed his sister, who was whining quietly. Her hand was cold.
No sound. From here, he couldn’t hear the sound of the high school, either. Tommy figured that he’d be able to hear the grown-ups hanging around the school—at least the ones who were outside...
