A gritty, struggle for self-preservation...
Huddle in place. That’s what they taught him at school during active shooter drills.
This story stands on its own; however, it’s recommended that you read the first part if you haven’t already: Rent Reality… Stalking Shadows… Family Gone… A Hellstorm…
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Richard had survived by hiding in the freezer at the back of a 7-Eleven, sneaking out occasionally to eat protein bars off the shelf. No one else was around to eat them, and Richard figured he didn’t have to pay for them now...
Huddle in place. That’s what they taught him at school during active shooter drills.
Guess it worked on the “things” too. He didn't want to think about the "things."
Richard had spent most of the last three days crying — for his mother and sister, for the sounds of people being eaten by the "things," for his own future — until, eventually, he had no more tears left to give.
This morning, he had left the 7-Eleven behind and started moving through the city, following a battalion of marching troops — the pick of Hell’s Legion, as he had dubbed them.
The rustle of crushed masonry shifting under a heavy bulk nearby snapped his attention back to the present.
A gigantic exhalation. A strange humming. Out in the alley, just around the corner, behind the wall of crumbling masonry... A dire rustling.
A great pink tentacle snaked its way around the side of the crumbling wall and into view.
Richard gasped and cowered, edging backward into a crevice at the back of the crumbling room. It might have once been a stairwell, but now it was a caved-in tangle of concrete and shredded steel.
He squished himself in, as deep as he could go. He made himself one with the rubble.
Ponderous, dragging steps thumped closer from the alley. The tentacle elongated and expanded, probing the air—scenting Richard’s breath.
Onward it came. Stretching out like the arm of a stranger, grasping for help.
A great shadow fell across the street in front of the office building.
Richard closed his eyes as tightly as he could--he couldn't help it.
Then he heard a new sound — a gasp of joy, like a child’s, but if it was bubbling up from the flabby throat of an octopus.
Even with his eyes squeezed shut, he could feel the burning gaze of a hungry predator boring into his skull.
Yet still he didn't open his eyes. He couldn't face it. He would await his death in the dark.
But his death did not come, instead, a loud noise echoed from the adjacent alley, "WHOOM!"
A rush of magnetism sucked at the air around Richard — the classic aftershock of the plasma rifles used by the Legionaries.
The “thing” must have drawn their attention.
A roar—like the screech of a thousand knives on a thousand porcelain plates—cut the air.
Richard felt the burning gaze lift, the heavy bulk withdraw, and then heard it rush off toward its attackers.
Then: whoom, whoom, whoom.
The magnetic suction -- The plasma.
Silence...
Another “thing” bit the dust.
That was the way of it. He’d seen it again and again since leaving his icebox. A bitter charity, provided by the troops.
At first, some people had thought the troops were our saviors—maybe Italians, Germans, or Russians—come to save the day.
They looked the part: slick black uniforms, gas masks, goggles.
People had run to them, thrown themselves at their feet in praise.
Anything was better than the “things.”
The troops had seemed to laugh silently behind their masks—slapping each other on the shoulder—before shooting the people for sport, or chaining them up and taking them away.
No, any semblance of humanity was only reflective-mask-deep. Slick black uniforms and a humanoid outline... Who knew what lay beneath...
Richard had watched it all whilst hiding like a pitiful coward. He didn't care.
By the second day, few monsters remained... Even Fewer people.
Shoving these thoughts away, he peeked cautiously around the corner and into the alleyway. The creature’s body—what was left of it—lay smoking two blocks away. The "things" travel fast.
He watched as a group of shock troops broke off from the column of marching soldiers two blocks away, crossed a sunlit avenue, and approached the smoldering corpse of the "thing." They fired a few more rounds into the still mass, then clapped each other on the back and posed in front of it as if taking selfies.
"Shock troops" was probably the wrong term, Richard realized.
The “things” were the shock troops.
The tornadoes were the nukes.
These were the cleanup crew.
Wipe out the inhabitants with the storm; the monsters were a mere byproduct and didn’t hurt the process. Follow with the soldiers.
Simple. Efficient.
Despite them being the enemy, Richard had survived only by tagging along with them—close, but never too close.
He wasn’t conscious of it. It was just instinct now: Don’t approach the evil soldiers. Creatures want to eat me. Must escape the creatures. Evil soldiers the kill creatures. Stay close, but not too close.
He watched them fall back into formation.
He listened. Nothing.
Only the steady left-right stomp of boots.
He crept out from his hiding place. Moved closer. Began to follow the soldiers, slipping from garbage pile to garbage pile, from mound to mound — like a shadow. The rustle of protein bar wrappers in his pockets was the only sound announcing his existence.
Two streets away now. He turned east, moving parallel with the column, winding through alleys and the crevices of collapsed buildings, past torn facades gaping like sagging mouths.
Two hours later, another “thing” caught wind of him.
It galloped down a major avenue to his right, trumpeting like a foul, demoniac elephant.
He searched for a hiding place—unnecessary.
Before it reached the cross-street, plasma bolts turned it away in a tangle of panicked tentacles.
Funny they didn’t bother to check what it was chasing.
But then, they didn’t seem to care much about anything.
“If dumb human slaves presented themselves, they would take them or kill them; if they hid, who cares? They’ll be dead sooner or later anyway. They had nowhere to go.”
Being near them was safe — for now. A bleak charity, he thought again. But this time, a strange anger rose in his chest — some human pride, innate in the hearts of all men and women, stirring within him.
How galling it was to rely on the very beings who had destroyed his world for protection!
He began to vent inwardly, even thinking up naïve revenge strategies for a moment. But then the fear of the "things" returned, prodding him into action, urging him to trail after the soldiers once again.
By some strange stroke of fate, the troops' path would soon bring them near his old school.
His old school, he thought with a grim smirk. Technically, it was still his school, but that’s not how he thought of it anymore. And he was right, of course — he would never be going back again.
He continued on for a time, ducking through the shadows, skulking like a sickly rat, unwelcome in his own homeland.
Then, there it was — looming up on his right, only two streets away from the marching troops.
It was strange to see it so dark and quiet; it had once been such a bright, busy place, full of laughing children and bustling teachers.
He noticed it was still in pretty good shape, apart from being empty and without electricity. Only the outer wall and gate had been damaged, torn loose by the passage of some great creature. The buildings themselves seemed intact from where he stood.
By some strange whimsy, he decided to go to school. Perhaps it was due to some weird subliminal feeling of safety associated with the place, or perhaps it was just some strange urge to accomplish the journey he and his family had set out upon three days ago—a goal which had been so rudely interrupted. Whatever it was, he cautiously made his way through a gap in the wall and into the school grounds.
All was silent within. He crept down an empty underpass with stone-walled classrooms on either side, listening for any rustling, slithering, or jerky hopping sounds.
Nothing.
He made his way up the old stone staircase to the second-level walkway and headed east. More classrooms lined his right and left. Then the disability bathroom.
A sound.
What was that? It came from the bathroom.
He froze, instinctively ready to crawl back the way he had come.
But then he heard it — the quiet whimpering of a child.
Who could it be? He was afraid to look, but what if it was… his sister? Hiding away, somehow having made her way to the school as planned?
Unlikely, he thought darkly, as a smear of tears welled in his eyes. But he had to check.
Slowly, he eased open the large blue door marked with the disabled sign. It creaked — stark and loud in the silence.
The whimpering continued.
He widened the crack and stared into the gloom...
He could just make out the outline of a small, scrawny boy — maybe thirteen — in a white T-shirt, standing in front of the mirror and sink.
The boy had his back to the doorway and was rubbing his face violently, caught in a paroxysm of terrible grief. He cried and moaned into his hands, rubbing his eyes over and over.
Richard stepped closer and let the door swing shut behind him.
It was dim in the small tiled room, lit only by the fading light of the evening sun, which glowed through a small opaque rectangle of filtered glass high in the top left corner.
The red light, tinged with silver, deepened the hellish atmosphere.
The air was muggy and damp.
The toilet to the rear left of the entrance was shattered, and a trail of broken porcelain led toward the drain at the center of the floor.
The lone sink in front of the boy was heaped with broken tile and shards of mirror glass.
The boy stopped crying and went completely still.
“It’s okay,” said Richard gently. “The ‘things’ aren’t here now.”
The boy didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and faced Richard.
Richard gasped and stepped back in shock.
The boy was not human.
Where his eyes should have been, there were only two ghastly black holes that seemed to bore into Richard.
The boy’s thin purple lips split into a hellish grin. His face was unnaturally bruised with a purple hue around the sockets, and his teeth tapered into sharp points.
Black tears streaked down his cheeks as he smiled.
The boy’s — no, the thing’s — hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, and Richard noticed the fingers ended in sharp black nails. Small black barbs jutted randomly from his bare limbs.
The thing began to chuckle and cry at the same time, shaking with a wild mixture of grief and maniacal joy.
"Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your world torn apart by a hellnado?" it said.
Its voice, though strained with grief, was disturbingly normal — the voice of a teenage boy.
Somehow, that only made it more horrible.
Richard stared at it.
It was a dumb question, given the circumstances.
But then he had an odd thought — maybe the same thing had happened to the thing's world, either long ago or in this very same storm, leaving it stranded here, in Richard’s world?
The very nature of the red tornadoes made such a thing possible.
The thing snatched up a shard of sharp porcelain and stared back at Richard.
The air thickened with palpable tension.
“Stop!” cried Richard. “We don’t have to do this!”
The boy—creature, whatever it was—shook its head. “You don’t understand anything! I must do this!” And then, with a cry of grief mixed with maniacal laughter, it rushed at Richard.
“No, don’t!” Richard cried and attempted to fend off the thing unwillingly, not wanting to hurt it.
The thing was small and scrawny compared to Richard.
He grabbed it by the shirt collar with his right hand and tried to catch the wrist holding the porcelain shard with his left. He missed.
The thing stabbed him in the ribs — a brutal, blunt blow that hurt like hell. But the shard was an imperfect blade and barely punctured his T-shirt.
The pain kicked Richard’s survival instincts into gear. He roared and lashed out, punching the thing in the face. Over and over and over.
Its flesh felt dry, cold, and hard, like ancient hardwood: heavy, rigid material wrapped tightly in a thin layer of leather.
It was a nasty, gritty fight — pure desperation.
Richard began to cry as he pummeled the thing’s face, operating on sheer survival instinct. But the kid seemed to feel no pain, continuing to cry and laugh horribly, stabbing at Richard with the shard even as its face grew more bloodied and pulped.
Richard felt sick, nauseated by the damage he was inflicting. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, anything this badly.
The shard bit in again — deeper this time — and Richard screamed in frustration and panic.
Then, with a burst of berserker survival instinct, he grabbed the thing by the throat and, using his greater body mass to full advantage, slammed it onto the tiled floor.
The thing’s head struck the tiles with a sickening crack, and blood began to stream from somewhere, running across the floor toward the central drain — a great black slash drifting across the glowing white surface.
The force of the blow sent the shard flying from the thing’s hand, shattering against the wall.
It kept laughing.
Richard, tears streaming down his face and blurring his vision, grabbed the thing’s head and began smashing it into the tiles — over and over and over and over.
He smashed it until the laughter finally stopped.
He smashed it until the back of its skull folded in.
He smashed it until bits of brain spilled onto the floor and the thing lay completely still, not even twitching anymore.
Richard had cried the entire time, and now that it was done, he felt as if he had slain a demon — but also, somehow, a scrawny boy.
A boy who had been afraid and unwilling, and yet forced to fight.
A boy just like himself — only smaller, younger, different.
As he stared down at the pitiful form, some dim part of his mind wondered if the thing had been a youth from the race that made up the army he had dubbed "Hell’s Legion."
But he couldn’t look at it any longer.
He got up stiffly and staggered against the doorway.
A wave of irrepressible nausea hit him, and he vomited half-digested bits of protein bar against the wall.
Unable to face the scene of his first kill, he stumbled outside in a daze and leaned heavily on the rail of the upper walkway.
Through a gap between the buildings, he stared down at the darkened schoolyard, catching his breath.
After a moment, he tilted his head back and gazed out over the broken city.
The sun was setting in the west, bathing the hellish landscape in an even deeper red glow and casting the broken city skyline into stark relief — like a black ink painting superimposed on the horizon.
Long shadows stretched from the twisted wreckage of cars, streetlights, and torn buildings, appearing like still, grotesque imitations of the "things" projected onto nearby walls.
Two streets away, the convoy of troops was still marching, the rear guard of the column now in view.
Richard realized with a pang of terror that the battalion would soon be out of reach.
In a dazed panic, he pressed a hand to the ragged gash in his left side, stumbled down the stairs, and out of the schoolyard to fall in behind them once again.
He couldn’t let the convoy get too far.
He needed its protection.
As he limped frantically toward the fading outline of the rear guard, he felt for the protein bars in his pockets.
One left.
The rest must have fallen out during the bathroom fight.
He wondered if they would pass another 7-Eleven soon.
He felt sick, exhausted, and physically weak — but also, somehow, stronger.
He had survived.
He was still alive.
I’m writing the next part of Hellstorm right now, so stay tuned for the next post if you want to follow Richard as he struggles through the hellscape that was once his homeworld…
This is a Darkmaw Short Story — crafted from a real nightmare of mine.
Peace!
Alternatively, if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber just yet but still want to support my work, or want more from the Darkmaw Series, consider purchasing my other Darkmaw short story, available now in full on Amazon:
Darkmaw: Yōsei-tachi no kyōen [A Banquete of the Fairies.] (Darkmaw: Grim Fantasy Short Stories)
It is a bit-sized read and is either free or 1.99 on Kindle. Enjoy!