CH 1

When he looked up, they were gone.

It had only been a second, an instant really; Dav had a faint bewildered thought about how quickly and with what finality things can suddenly, and completely change.

“No…” he whispered. “No… NO…NO….”

It was night, and the moon had not yet risen. His eyes were having a hard time adjusting to the gloom. Bright light occasionally shined through the rubble of buildings around him, illuminating the tell-tale wisps of steam rising from the ground before him; obscuring slightly, the faint wet scarlet glimmer that marked all that remained of… them.

There had been no sound to announce that it had happened. Just a feeling in his gut that something was off, a feeling he had ignored in his hurry to get the hatch open.  One second they had been murmuring frantically behind him, anxious to get down the hatch and the next? There was nothing. Eyes growing wide in disbelief, he glanced back down. The door handle he had been pulling opened grasped feebly in one hand, the other empty. His rifle dropped on the ground near his feet. The door suddenly felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. Letting it slip through his fingers, he fell to his knees in disbelief as the door slammed down, its mechanical lock whirring faintly as it reengaged.

Crying out a faint whimper, his eyes found the pock mark in the asphalt where… where they had been standing just seconds ago.  Eeeeeeeeee! Suddenly, a shrill piercing screech sounded off in the dark followed by a loud, deep WHUUUUMM. The noise drowned out all other sound as he stared at the ground, and jerked Dav back into the situation, he stared out into the gloomy ruins.

WHUUUUUUM. The strange sound came again, faster now, growing louder and louder with each repetition; the earth began to shake.  WHUUUUUM. Dirt and debris began to rain down from the ruins of the city, cascading down in a torrential avalanche with each blare of the sound.

 WHUUUUUM. Dav’s eyes focused sharply on the scene in front of him, as the sound caused tiny ripples in the small crimson drops spattered across the ugly scar on the ground. WHUUUUUUM. WHUUUUUM. The sound repeated over and over, almost frantic the faster it came.

His eyes squeezed shut in disbelief, and he grabbed his head in both hands, trying in vain to shut out the insanity of the situation. WHUUUUUUUUM. WHUUUUUUM. WHUUUUUUM. Like a massive heartbeat WHUUUUUM, WHUUUUUUUM, WHUUUUUUUM . WHUUUUUUM. Steady, loud; maddening., Louder, faster, closer. Shaking his head, he screamed; voice drowned out by the terrible sound. Louder still the closer it came. WHUUUUM. WHUUUM. WHUUUUUM. WHUUUUUM. WHUUUUUM.

A massive figure appeared in front of him in the distance, emerging from the darkness, it towered above the blasted-out ruins of what was once a municipal city bus. WHUUUUUUUUUM! For all its impossible size, it was still nothing more than a silhouette, faintly back lit by the haphazard lights scanning in the distance.

WHUUUUMMM!

Dav’s fingernails began to scrape furrows into unprotected flesh as he clawed frantically, uncontrollably, left hand at his face, right hand across the ground beside him, dirt and rock now smeared with the blood of his fingertips as he grasped mindlessly for his rifle.

WHUUMWHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUUMWHUUUM.

With a shout, and one hand he managed to grasp the pistol grip of the M4 rifle he had dropped moments before, and clumsily raised it to his shoulder. WHUUUUUM! The silhouette lurched ever closer, hulking, massive. WHUUUUM. WHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUM!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! The piercing screech keened out through the blackness again, this time he knew its source was the abomination clambering toward him in the darkness. He grabbed the rifle in both hands as his mind snapped back barely, from the brink of madness. Blood dripped down his cheek as he shouldered the rifle, and flipping the selector from safe to fire, pulled the trigger. BAM! BAM-BAM! The report of the rifle, sharp and definite as thunder, was swept up in the cacophony of noise already polluting the area and Dav barely noticed it over the unholy racket coming from the beast, which fueled by his terror, mixed with his own pitifully insignificant screams as he let loose a second volley of semi-automatic fire. He screamed again, this time in disbelief and mounting rage as the thing clearly hit by several of his wild shots, kept coming.

WHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUM. came the sound of the creature, lumbering forward.  BAM! BAM! BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! The sharp report of his rifle seemed insignificant against the oncoming horror.

WHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUMWHUUUM.

He was unsure of how many times he fired; he saw that he had swapped magazines once, almost on autopilot when his weapon ran dry the first time. The flash of the muzzle came so fast and bright that his eyes swam in the darkness; the hulking form before him seemed to move as in a dream; closer and closer still. The sound of the battle fading away as the beast grew ever nearer.

Soon Dav could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heartbeat, loud and frantic in his mind. Suddenly, his breath caught as the beast stopped short, looming a mere few feet in front of him. Time stretched out for what seemed an eternity and Dav noticed the smoke trailing lazily upward from the muzzle of his rifle, indifferent to the terror of the moment. The barrel glowed a soft red, super-heated by the sheer volume of ammunition spent over such a short period of time, the glow was faint, and Dav stared upward into the face of the beast before him to find that it was not enough to penetrate the gloom hiding the details of the abomination’s form. The creature seemed impossibly still for what seemed an eternity, the world around him as if frozen in time for a few short heartbeats.

There was silence. A silence so complete, so loud that it threatened to obliterate the tiny shred of sanity he had managed to recapture. It hung in the air like a veil all around him, seeming to solidify before being shattered with the echo of the last round fired ringing in his ears, now nothing but a fading memory. Suddenly, the creature wavered, and Dav had just enough time to wonder distractedly, where the searching lights in the distance had gone, when the beast shuffled a step, and with a noise that sounded akin to a pack of bears letting loose a long sigh in unison, fell forward, thudding wetly to the ground.

Exhausted and terrified, Dav’s arms dropped to his sides, suddenly useless as his rifle clattered once more to the ground at his feet. He looked down at it, frowning in confusion and eyes rolling up, slumped to his knees, before falling over onto his side knowing nothing but blackness.

___________________________________________________________

“…Huuuuff.”

Exhaling sharply, his body protested as eyes fluttered open, with about as much grace as a lead winged butterfly; he groaned. It was still dark, though the faint red of dawn on the horizon was beginning to illuminate the shot blasted, ruined skeleton of the once great city before him, casting a ghostly red pallor on everything it touched.

Groaning again, he scooped up his rifle from where it lay amid the rocks and debris beside him. Grunting, his exhaustion was such that he was forced to use the rifle as a crutch to push himself off the ground. Eyes darting involuntarily to the small crater in front of him, he saw that the crimson droplets, previously so vivid in their color, had begun to dry and crack, fading to a dusky brown. His chest heaved a quickly stifled sob, his throat raw and dry. The wounds on his face had dried enough that the blood now came in a slowly oozing trickle, mixed with the sweat and grime that covered the rest of him. It stung, though he was too exhausted to pay much notice.

Flies buzzed lazily around the carcass of the beast, indifferent to the carnage, and Dav looked one last time past the hulking corpse to see that the sun was climbing higher in the distance. A lone ray of light pierced through the skeletal remains of the buildings on the horizon, causing him to throw and arm up across his eyes as a shield. It brought no warmth, or if it did, he could not feel it. Glancing down, the crater in front of him laid starkly empty, save for the now dried droplets of blood speckled about it.

All that remains…  He thought bitterly, knowing that their memories were indelibly scarred into his psyche. Reaching down, Dav punched in a code on the keypad atop the massive metal door. There was a soft whirring as the mechanism disengaged, almost in cruel mockery at this simple parody of his attempt to open the door just hours before, when… when they were still alive.

The door, firmly affixed in its concrete casement popped open slightly with a rush of stale air. It was heavy, and he slung his rifle across his back to free his hands as he tugged it open. Once done, he stood for a moment, staring down the ladder-well into the darkness below. The sun was climbing higher behind him, the black sky now streaked with purple and red.

Blinking away tears he climbed over the edge and dropped inside, his hands gripping the rungs of the rusted yellow ladder, they shook violently, and he had to focus his breathing to calm them as he stopped, looking out to survey the scene around him, hand reaching up to pull the hatch closed as he did. The city was a ruin. Dirt, rubble, debris, bent metal, broken glass, burned out buildings and twisted cars, a cruel reflection of his own soul.

He laughed suddenly, bitterly; knowing he was now truly alone.  He pulled the door the rest of the way shut, surrounded by darkness.