by Kody Boye
Girl was the word I heard whispered in my head. Girl, girl—
I raised the walls around my consciousness and found that the intruding presence disappeared almost immediately, much to my relief.
After expelling a breath, I tightened my hold on the rifle I had strapped across my chest and nodded as Asha and I exchanged gazes. Her eyes were dark, her emotions shrouded by a stone-cold facade. I imagined this was due to the fact that we had a duty to do and that she didn’t want anything interfering, but regardless, it still made me feel guilty for feeling so nervous.
I couldn’t think about that though, not when there was so much at stake. The whole mission depended on me and my ability to operate under pressure—which, at that moment, was so intense that it threatened to overwhelm me.
I expelled a breath from my mouth and reclaimed it through my nose just as we passed over Lady Bird Johnson Lake and made our way toward the outskirts of downtown Austin. Wooded, and overrun with vegetation, the encroaching forest threatened to overwhelm the roadways were it not to be maintained soon. Already power lines had been felled, derelict cars that had been left along the running trails gutted by the forces of nature. An old fireman’s training tower appeared ready to collapse and the distant lake beyond reflected the light from the full moon back at us.
In all, the sight was tranquil, but held a sinister malevolence I knew could only be associated with this night.
“We’re getting closer,” Captain Sin said from the Humvee’s passenger seat. “We should be there in about ten minutes.”
“Do you feel anything?” a nearby soldier asked, centering his eyes on me.
I nodded, but only out of the need to tell the truth in front of our commanding officer. “Yes,” I managed. “A presence, trying to push its way into my mind.”
“Then They know we are coming,” Captain Sin said. “Stand by, troops, and await further instruction.”
After that, everyone—including me and the inquisitive soldier—remained silent, which allowed me time to process just what would occur come time we reached the downtown Sixth Street area.
Eventually, we passed from the forested outskirts of downtown Austin and made our way into the heart of the city, where we began to pass haunted business buildings whose windows were either covered with dirt or completely blown out. Glass littered the sidewalks, trash the areas where dumpsters had never been tended, and those cars that had not been ravaged by the effects of the initial invasion lay dormant and waiting—as if, at any moment, humanity would return to reclaim their lost vessels.
I swallowed a lump in my throat as we made our way up the main street that cut across the downtown area and took in a breath as I saw the sign for Sixth Street.
The club district—glorious as it once was—lay in shambles.
Most of the buildings here were decimated. Rendered wastelands by the alien invasion of September 17th, 2024, they appeared nothing like their former selves and instead resembled the rubble of a lost civilization. Bricks lay scattered everywhere, concrete blocks in thick sections along sidewalks. Old signs that once displayed club names were either hanging loosely from what remained of the buildings’ frameworks or were completely decimated. These sights, and more, haunted me as we pulled up toward a building whose structure remained mostly intact, and served to do little more than terrify me the more I considered what we were about to do.
“All right,” Sin said. “Exit the Humvee and wait further instruction.”
I did as asked, waiting for the seven other individuals inside the vehicle to disembark before I did. Asha climbed out after me, but steadied herself on the vehicle as she stepped upon a piece of uneven asphalt.
This place—it was death incarnate: a graveyard for a past that would never be treasured.
As the other soldiers came about to face Captain Sin and his second-in-command, a woman by the name of Lieutenant Lindsay Spears, I straightened my posture as most, if not all eyes fell on me and prepared for what was to come.
“All right,” Lindsay Spears said. “You know the drill, people. We’re to protect Ana Mia Sofia Berrios as she draws the Coyotes to this location. We need at least four men on top of the building—” the woman pointed to the old alternative club beside us “—and the rest on the various windows on the ground floor. We’re not going to have a whole lot of time once this starts happening, so we need to do this fast. Get on the double! Now!”
The men and women of the United States Army and the Burgundy Hospital militia began to make their way toward the club, training their rifles, shotguns and machineguns on the front door and windows while making their way forward. Asha joined them, aiming her rifle toward the far window, and when she deemed that it was safe for entry, she reared the butt of her weapon back and slammed it into the frame.
Glass spider webbed, then shattered.
She cleared the frame with her weapon before gesturing people to jump inside, then turned and offered me one last glance before she, too, disappeared inside the building.
I felt Lindsay Spears’ hand upon my shoulder and instantly regretted being alive. “Are you ready?” the woman asked.
I nodded, too afraid to speak.
I lifted my head when the sharpshooters aligned themselves atop the building’s roof before making my way toward the building.
Someone unlocked and opened the club’s massive front door.
I entered.
I turned.
I felt, as the door closed behind Captain Sin and Lindsay Spears, that I was the last hope for Austin, Texas in what seemed to be its final hours of occupation.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Captain Sin said.
I nodded, expelled a deep breath, and then said, “Okay.”
I opened my consciousness to the world.
Almost immediately I felt Them.
They’d been expecting me—that much was already for certain—and as a result had likely begun to draw closer upon hearing the sounds of moving vehicles and shattering glass. Their minds reached out to me in feeble attempts at communication, in feverish intents of understanding. Girl, girl, They said, as if one-track-minded and unable to say anything further. Find the girl. Find the girl.
Whether or not this was behavior carried over from the times when They were supposed to have been searching for me I did not know, but that didn’t matter. All I knew was that when I began to see the glowing eyes in the distance, my heart started beating like a hammer in my chest.
“How many are there?” Lindsay Spears asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s, there’s—”
A shot rang out, silencing me before I could continue.
“One down!” someone cried out as the yellow eyes went dark.
Another Coyote appeared.
Another shot was fired.
Two more Coyotes appeared in the previous one’s place and then three more stepped out from a nearby alleyway.
Soon, the night was alight with gunfire, a rain of bullets appearing from the small dance club and lighting up the night. Flashes in the darkness revealed in small detail the horrors currently advancing upon us, but soon They were no more. Soon, nothing but twitching corpses lay on the ground, the light dying from Their eyes mere moments after They hit the asphalt.
Then there was silence.
I stood there for several long moments, contemplating our surroundings and trying to determine if that had been all of Them or if there would be more. I extended my consciousness out to the world around me and felt nothing—absolutely nothing—which both intrigued and unsettled me.
“Was… that it?” one of the militiamen asked, her voice trembling and filled with fear.
“I don’t see any more!” someone on the roof called down to us.
“Neither do I,” Captain Sin said. “Which means that there were only seven, or They’re not—”
A sharp, stabbing pain struck me in the head before Captain Sin could finish, which sent me to my knees and my hands to my ears.
“Ana Mia!” I heard him cry. “Ana Mia, what’s—”
It materialized, then, in a haze before my vision: the Reaper, white as bone, with eyes black as night and a body that bore no differentiating features upon its person. It appeared only briefly, but in that one moment, I felt something unlike anything I had ever experienced from the Coyotes, from the Grays, or even the creature Asha and I had encountered in the woods all those fateful weeks ago.
I felt true and utter malice.
“Ana!” Asha cried. “What’s going—”
“They’re coming,” was all I could say.
Shuffling movements that predicted the coming of a great swarm echoed along what remained of the Sixth Street buildings’ walls and entered my ears like a swarm of locusts. Cries—which resembled a cross between dying lambs and screaming women—entered my ears and struck terror in me unlike anything I had ever felt.
No Coyote had made me this afraid, nor had any Gray made me feel so small.
No.
This was something else.
I realized, in that moment, that this was Hell.
“REAPERS!” someone on top of the roof cried. “REAPERS!”
“Everyone fall back!” Captain Sin cried, raising his weapon as the men and women of the United States military and Burgundy Hospital militia began to scramble throughout the club, their movements aimless and their directions uncoordinated. At first I thought they were falling back toward the maintenance stairwell that led to the roof. Then I realized several of them were heading toward the back exit.
“NO!” Asha screamed. “Up here! Up here!”
The men and women turned just as the gunfire started and the Reapers began to breach the front hall.
I trained my gun down the stairwell below me as Captain Sin and Lindsay Sterling began to make their way up with me, flanked by people on both sides and behind them.
Sadly, it was not to be.
Several of the Reapers—innumerable in numbers and monstrous in Their ferocity—jumped on the soldiers, causing gunfire to spray everywhere. I ducked just in time to avoid getting shot in the head and watched Asha fall—not because she was wounded, thankfully, but because she’d stumbled from reeling backward.
She lost her balance.
She fell to the ground.
Her butt hit the stairs hard enough to make her scream.
I reached for her as up top the door opened and two men appeared to take hold of Asha’s arms. “COME ON!” one of them screamed.
“I think I broke my tailbone!” Asha cried, tears streaming down her face.
The men hauled her to her feet and dragged her up the stairwell just in time for Sin and Spears to go sailing past me.
A bombardment of thoughts continued to assault me—of knives cutting through flesh, of needles injecting noxious chemicals into bloodstreams, of torture devices rendered upon unsuspecting persons as They attempted to extrapolate any and whatever information They could.
I saw, briefly, a man that resembled my father.
Then everything went dark.
I opened my eyes to find a Reaper staring right back at me.
I raised my gun.
I fired.
It went down but was replaced by two more.
When I found that I could not save anyone else, I turned, barreled up the stairwell, and threw myself through the open threshold.
The door slammed behind me.
Someone pushed their weight up against it.
The Reapers’ feral screams tore through the night and cut daggers through the tension upon the air.
“Are you okay?” Lindsay Spears asked, taking hold of my arm and turning my body so I could face her.
“I’m… fine,” I said, blinking. “I just… blanked out for a second there.”
“She had a vision,” Asha sobbed. “She saw something. Something about Them.”
“Did you?” Captain Sin asked. “Did you really?”
I nodded.
“Well, what was it then? Tell us!”
“I think you were right,” I said. “About the Reapers being castoff experiments.”
“But you said—”
“That They expired peacefully,” I replied. “Maybe They did as people, but not as whatever these things are.”
Captain Sin turned his attention toward the doorway as the pounding ceased to come. “Spears,” he said. “Status report.”
“They’ve stopped attempting to breach entry, sir.”
“But what does that—”
I heard something hiss.
I turned.
And saw Them standing in the street, all staring up at us, all watching, waiting, anticipating whatever move we would make next.
Someone raised their gun and prepared to fire.
“No!” I cried.
The shot went anyway.
Another scream—this time from further away—answered Their cries.
Within moments the streets were filled with Reapers. Drawn, instinctively, by the noise of battle, and the smell of blood, They scrambled into every nook and corner They could and reached feebly for us with trembling roars and screams.
“There’s so many of Them,” Lindsay Spears said, her voice shaking and lips quivering as she stared down at those below.
“Hold it together, soldier!” Captain Sin barked. “Everything’s going to be just fine. Everything—”
One of the Reapers attempted to jump onto the fire escape leading down from the roof. Though it missed, and fell, others began to make the effort to do the same, ensuring that we would no longer be safe if They devised a way to reach the few short feet They needed to climb aboard the wrought-iron ladder.
I stumbled, then, and only just barely caught myself on an air-conditioning unit before sliding down to the concrete roof below me.
Was this it, I wondered? Was this how I was going to die—trapped and cold and waiting for Them to devour us?
“What do we do?” I heard one of the five remaining soldiers ask.
“We wait,” Captain Sin said.
Asha sobbed.
I closed my eyes.
Already the temperature was plummeting.
Just how cold could it get in Austin, Texas?
Chapter 14
I found out not long after that it could get incredibly cold.
Though unable to determine the temperature by thermometer or anything else, the sign of my breath upon the wind was enough to assure me that it was getting colder faster than I could have ever anticipated. Shivering, now, from the chill biting at my skin, I rubbed my hands along my arms and curled into as tight a ball against Asha as I could as below us the Reapers continued to try and find a way onto the roof.
“We’re going to die up here,” Asha said, “aren’t we?”
I couldn’t respond—not because I particularly wanted to, but because I honestly, truly didn’t know. Perhaps we could wait out the creatures and survive the night, perhaps not. But if it got any colder—and it seemed like it surely would—then that could only mean—
I shook my head.
No.
I would not freeze to death on the roof of some long-dead club. I would make sure of it.
Standing, I made my way over to where Captain Sin stood smoking a cigarette and looked him straight in the eyes. “You need to help us,” I said.
“What do you expect me to do?” the captain asked, then turned his head to exhale a lungful of smoke. “Build a bridge? Kill all the Reapers? I already put in a call to headquarters and was already informed that we can’t get air support until morning.”
“We’ll freeze to death before morning!” I cried.
Captain Sin stepped forward and stared me straight in the eyes. “Look, girl,” he growled. “I don’t know what kind of power trip you think you’re on, but unless you can do something about our little problem—” he gestured to the streets and the Reapers upon it “—then I’ve already done everything that I can.”
I slumped to
the floor—cold, defeated, and utterly inconsolable over what I’d just been told. Somehow, though, I managed to hold back tears and drew up alongside Asha. We’d been up here for hours—watching, listening, waiting for whatever was to happen to happen—and though I’d managed to sleep for a fair amount of it, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d be able to sleep anymore.
Between the sounds of Sin smoking, the Reapers moving and the remaining men and women breathing, there was little in the way of silence.
I lifted my heads as Lindsay Spears came over and sat down beside me. “Sorry about him,” she said, nodding in the direction of Captain Sin. “He’s on edge.”
“Aren’t we all?” I asked, shivering.
The woman reached down to pat my knee, then leaned forward to examine the Reapers congregating in the streets to our right. “Look at Them,” she said, disgust filling her voice as the creatures craned Their dark eyes up to look at us. “Just look what They did to Them.”
“It’s horrible,” I agreed, thinking back to Grayson and the lies he had told me.
Our subjects are not maintained past the initial observation period, the alien had said. They expire peacefully and without fear.
Maybe they did, but what happened to the bodies after they expired? Were they twisted? Mutated? Turned into these… these retched things? It seemed like it, because there They were, standing in the streets, waiting for us to give in and give up. It was an undeniable fact that They had little else to do other than wait, because as They stood there, watching us with intent a bloodhound would have on a foxhole, They remained eerily still. It was almost unnerving to watch Them do anything, let alone blink or gnash Their teeth—which was why, when I sighed, and when one of Them snarled, I nearly jumped a foot out of my skin.
How much longer would this last, I wondered? Would They wait until morning, during which time we would hopefully be rescued, or would They eventually leave when drawn by sounds other than us?
