A silence so shattering it could warp the glass window in front of me. Detached from the rest of the fractured building is a four-square window frame. Behind me is the blown-out office building that used to have the dull monotony of everyday life. That seems like a rich man’s wedding compared to the scene I see before me. A desolate urban wasteland. No vines no overgrowth just a hollow city with the occasional toppled tower. A perfectly tainted image of the failures of old.
The crackle of buildings and the snapping whip of torn-off cables vibrate through the air. It’s awake. Another tower toppled.
I make sure to time my movement with each of its steps to be sure I’m not heard. I pass through the dilapidated streets. Coyotes come down from the hills often, their eyes strike my soul. Their paws pitter-patter softly touching the ground. In most cases, I wouldn’t even notice the sounds their paws make but different circumstances. They don’t attack, knowing we’ll need all the help we can get. I pass by a 2009 Sudan, always love the classics. It has prescription antibiotics in the front seat. I pause. Gears grind through my head at an alarming rate. I decide the risk is too great. Car alarms are a great way to get yourself torn in unusual ways by that thing. I keep pushing.
Footprints the size of 16-wheelers leave their mark like a black spot warning my eventual fate. The Tantrum of the creature doesn’t end. It’s like city traffic to me always there, always droning on but never fatal if you know what you’re doing. A church continues to hold it’s form on a fractured city block. The rubble surrounding it makes for good decor. The sun sets shining through the mosaic, leaving a sign from God directly in the center of the footprint.
It’s been out longer than usual. A harsh symphonic screech locates it about 20 city blocks away. I wish that were far enough. I look off into the distance to see it climb up a previously untouched skyscraper. The faint crunch of obliterated glass makes it’s way over to my ears. The building buckling underneath its weight. I look over to the pharmacy, wondering if I really need medicine that I don’t have a use for yet. The tower releases a guttural moan behind me as the creature removes itself from the top. I don’t dare look back. “Damnit” I run into the pharmacy.
A short walk and it’s already here. “THUD.” The whole building shakes. “THUD.” A six-pack of Redbull hits the floor. “THUD.” Glass hits the pharmacy floor. It’s difficult to run on the waving floor. Sparks fly out of the corpses of the self-checkout machines and the once-grinding fluorescent lights. I run to the frozen aisle. It’s almost a delusional thought but I don’t see many other options to lower my body heat. I push the shelves out of the way as they crash to the same floor half of the pharmacy’s inventory is. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s obviously not cold enough. The electricity went out when it came around. “THUD.” I freeze. “THUD.” I hold my breath. “THUD.” I pray.
I haven’t heard anything in the past hour. That means nothing. Its sleep schedule is sporadic. I slowly climb out of the dead refrigerator. The glass shards crunch beneath my military-grade boots. The pharmacy’s inventory is scattered across the floor. Every step is another painful screeching crunch. The medication counter feels like a mile away as I measure in decibels instead of feet.
I pause in the middle of sliding over the countertop. Pills make a violent mosaic on the floor. “Fuck” I’m not a fucking pharmacist, I wouldn’t even know where to start. I make my way off the counter and out through the field of glass shards.
Out in the open again. Empty and alone. Fallen wires lay on the ground like electric serpents. No coyote’s in sight. No friends, No family. I’m losing memories of what it was like to have a person that cares as opposed to a threat in a man’s clothes. It’s a long walk home.
I stand in front of a rusted industrial warehouse. Compared to the rest of the city it’s a pristine new-age castle that a tech titan would frequent more often than his other homes. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes tower to the ceiling. Not a single one touched for years now. The rusted steel door creeks as it opens and I head down to the basement.
“CLANG” Something’s in my home. It sounds like it’s running through the makeshift kitchen. I rush down the steps pistol in hand.
“HEY!” A girl is rooting through my kitchen no more than maybe 15. Age doesn’t matter in a place like this. I’ve seen children kill in a place like this. “HEY!” I shout again. She doesn’t turn around and continues her search for the perfect fucking spice or whatever she’s digging around for. I keep my gun bolted to my hand but I don’t cock it. “Hey what are you doing here.”
“Aba aahh aga” My head whips around. When I see what’s on my bed my gun loosens from my hand just slightly. A baby.
“Hey, kid! What the hell is going on here?” Still, no response as she continues to dig through my food supply. It’s not until I tap on her shoulder with my pistol that she turns around. She turns around lightning-quick. Her eyes widen like the God Damn Grand Canyon. She waves her hand frantically but not a single sound from her mouth. I keep my gun raised. “What’s with the baby?” She doesn’t say anything, her hands slowly drop, I follow with my pistol, still not in its holster thought.
She pulls up a knife and runs over to the baby. I just hope she’s not the mother. She picks up the child and backs up the basement stairs, knife still in hand. She looks up at the steel door. A prison of the outside world, keeping those inside safe from what’s beyond the barrier. She tightens her grip on the knife. She is caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock doesn’t have teeth twice the size of her. I holster the gun.
“Hey, it’s alright. My pistol’s down.” My front hand is raised. She takes another step back. I take one myself and give her space. “Do you want some food?” I bring out some jerky and a frozen meal… PF changs… Dan Dan Noodles. Probably have the last frozen meals in the area. Thank God for car batteries. I load it into the microwave. No reaction to each prevailing beep of the microwave. “You like noodles?” “Noodles?” Maybe she’s Spanish? “Tu hablas Englais?” No response. I lean on a wheeless cart I found in a mailroom for the entire three minutes. Just staring at each other, knife still locked in her grip.
“Ding!” The food is done. Looks as bout as good as a microwaved meal is. It’s at her feet. She looks down. As cautious as a TSA agent on 9/12 she puts down her knife. I hand her a fork. She inhales the entire microwave-safe plate.
“Now what’s your name?” She shakes her head and taps her ear twice. She’s deaf. I bring over a piece of paper and a pen. She scribbles out quickly. ‘The baby needs food.’ sprawled on the paper. A strange name. I respond with sincerity. “I don’t have baby food.” She looks at me and taps her ear again. Right, deaf. I flip the other side of the paper. ‘I don’t have baby food’ She scrunches her face and goes off to the bed, baby still in hand. No discussion of if she can even stay. I suppose I can’t just leave her out in the empty. I take the IKEA chair for the night.
The morning starts with the deaf girl rifling through my kitchen again. Each item makes a completely different noise as it impacts the ground. She wouldn’t hear it anyways. I gather my belongings and prepare for round two on the supply run. Never know what you’ll find out there and not much else to do. I hear another pair of footsteps trailing her way up the stairs. I almost groan. I turn around to see her ready-to-go baby in arm. No fucking way. I tap my lips and stretch my mouth like a fucking yawning cat. “LEEEAAVVVE THE BAAAAABBBYYY HEEEEEEERRREEEE” She brings out the same paper from last night and points to ‘The baby needs food’. The paper rustles as she bats it back and forth. “I AAAAMMM NNNOOOTTTT GOOOIIING WWWWIITTHHH YOUUUU.”
I climb up the stairs, she’s almost at my heels. The baby is thankfully still asleep. The sun filters through the cracks in the ceiling. The warmth against my skin feels nice. I bask in it for a little before I’m interrupted by the deaf girl walking up to me with the baby and the paper. I take a pen and write around the already written words. ‘You can stay here or go on your own.’ She doesn’t take kindly to the response and rattles her paper again. I grab it. ‘I will look for baby formula.’
She takes it and writes more. We’re writing in the margins now. ‘Hasn’t eaten in 6 days. May not be alive when we get back.’ ‘Who is he?’ I pass the paper back. ‘I don’t know, found him.’
Jesus. I look up at the ceiling. Dust particles romantically float across the ray of light. I’m reminded of my own child her smile, her joy. Young children are so vulnerable. A bird crosses above the hole in the warehouse roof. Fuck. I grab the paper. ‘Do you have a binky?’ Hopefully, keep him busy. She pulls one out of her pocket. God fucking Damnit.
I’ve never been more sensitive to sound in my entire life. The city streets are a Jackson Pollock of junkyard finds and remnants of lives long gone. Despite the hollow-scape it feels louder than the city before it. I am particularly partial towards the familiar cracks of the waking beast. The city birds stopped coming around preferring the habitat of their ancestors to the dangers of the post-urban remnants. A local grocery chain sits on the corner. It’s an oasis in the drudgery. The deaf girl makes a break for it. Her empathy for that child is like a rabid golden retriever running only on immediate instinct with immense disregard for her surroundings. I grab her arm before she can get too far. Shake my head in warning. A finger to my lips. Just because she can’t hear doesn’t mean she doesn’t make noise.
The store is just as dilapidated as the rest of the environment. The asphalt out front shattered into pieces by an impact no doubt made by the creature. The baby still slung in a blanket across her front binky in mouth. Each aisle looks more and more barren. Forget the canned foods all gone. Something falls to the floor over a few aisles. A shuffling. It drags it across the floor. I hold my hand up to the deaf girl, look back at her, and tap my lips twice. ‘SSSSTAAAYYYYY HHHHHHEEEERRREEEE.’ I mouth.
My heart rate raises with every step. Memories of horrific rumors flood every ventricle in my brain. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after hearing early survivor stories. Creatures climbing up and down the fire escapes, flesh stretched across drums, night stalkers with eyes said to drive you mad, of course, I’ve been through my own struggles but something about being killed by something so mundane as a small mutated alien freak hits an existential dread of failure that doesn’t strike the same. I can hear it fidgeting around the corner. I detour down the aisle with the utensils, every motion a tepid sidestep. A kitchen knife is quieter than a gun. I come around the edge of the aisle. I take a deep breath and round the corner. I chuckle it’s just that damn coyote.
“CLANG!” A few aisles over. The Coyote makes a dash for it leaving the rotten meat it was dragging on the floor it was most likely found. “aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH” My stomach drops down miles Fuck, fuck, fuck. That God Damned Baby. “AAAAAAAHH AHHHHHHHHH” The ground shakes. I sprint so fucking fast it feels like I’m leaving my legs behind. The iron among the skyscrapers stretch. My breathing is heavy. Glass shatters along the side of the building. I feel like I’m suffocating. The low grumble of the horrific beast mimics the shockwaves emanating from the creature. ‘AAAAAHHHHH, AAAAHHHHHH” I look down every aisle trying to find the source of the sound. It’s hard to hear from the whirlwind of the chaotic symphony. I feel like screaming for being such a damn idiot but I can’t. It doesn’t even register that the coyote is running back toward me. I find the aisle. She’s digging through boxes and boxes of formula not even noticing the baby. I almost trip over myself, speeding to quiet him. I grab the deaf girl in a panic and take a part of the blanket the kid is wrapped in and shove it in his mouth. Ethics is out the window. She tries to brush me off of her until…
A disgusting slime-ridden slither bounces back and forth around the grocery store followed by the crashing of the aisles around it. The creature’s tongue acts like it has a mind of its own. The muffled tears of the baby have subsided. The deaf girl’s eyes have locked on to the thing behind me. It crawls its way past the aisle. We lock eyes. So much is said between that glance. We move slower than molasses. She is watching her every step. The baby’s mouth is stuffed with a dirty binky and blanket cloth. Pray to God there’s a back door and pray harder we can get to it. The mucus crunches together as the tongue rounds the next aisle over. We’re missing our window. The silent race begins. My heartbeat goes silent almost as if I’m already dead. The deaf girl’s hand grabs mine. My head spins back towards her in panic, I’m sure something went wrong.
I have never seen someone in so much terror. She can’t hear anything happening in the next aisle over. She’s putting her trust in someone she barely knows. I nod toward her and squeeze her hand right back. With each step, I grow more and more unsure of how to proceed. It’s a risk to stay it’s a risk to move. I chose to step forward, a decision that could kill me, kill us. The slime plastering against the aisle over enforces the sinking terror pounding away in my chest. The end of the aisle. We’ve made it, just not in time.
“Squigggggggggstkstkstk” the tongue rounds the corner. We’re frozen.
“Mmmmppppppphhh” Comes from the baby’s gagged mouth.
“Squig” The tongue freezes.
“Mmmmpppphhh”
“Squuuuuiiiiigggggstkstkstk” It twitches as it turns the corner ahead of us and slides towards the deaf girl. I stop my breathing even that could be too loud. She tightens her grip. I respond with a similar grip hoping that it’s strong enough to get her through this. We’re surrounded. The baby keeps up his muffled babbling. The deaf girl has tears of panic drowning her eyes. The tongue lands at the tip of her foot. She almost buckles. I tighten my grip. Stay calm.
“Crrraaack SNAP!” She’s screaming. Not a single sound out her mouth but she’s screaming in pain. “Ssssnnniiiittt” It digs deeper. She almost collapses but holds on to the shelf behind her. She knows if she drops the child we will all be dead. She’s holding her tears knowing a single drop could let her living status known to the creature. I tighten my grip, remembering doctors’ appointments with my own daughter. She’s on her way out fighting to stay conscious and all I can fucking do is watch. Each snap digs through my ear drums. It’s crippling to be so fucking useless.
A soft gallop sprints past the other end of the aisle. The Coyote is making a break for it. The tongue releases her leg. Her leg is shattered. A limp bag of skin holding obliterated bone. The tongue retracts at unfathomable speed leaving it’s unfinished prey to wallow. She doesn’t dare move despite the horrific pain she must be in. She holds on to the shelf for her dear life fighting the urge to collapse The tongue whips a fluorescent light on its way out. She hits the floor just as the tongue crashes into the no longer automatic doors.
Nothing to do now but wait. A low grumble and the release of the surrounding building signifies its leave. But we still wait. She finally collapses. I pray that she wasn’t too loud. “THUD” The building shakes “THUD” I check for a pulse. “THUD” She’s still alive. “THUD” We wait.
The rusted walls of my makeshift basement home mock the state we are left in. This warehouse is no place to live.
I stand looking over the baby. The deaf girl lays unconscious. That baby put us in danger. I grip my gun. She won’t let go of that child. He may die soon but we don’t know how long. The deaf girl is unconscious. I unholster my gun. Knife would be too messy. Single bullet and it’s over. The deaf girl is unconscious. Safety is off. We can’t continue like this. She wouldn’t even know it happened. She can’t unattach herself from that child. I’d do the same for my daughter. The deaf girl is unconscious. I have my thumb on the hammer. The deaf girl is unconscious. I pull it back and aim, why do I hesitate? The deaf girl is unconscious.
A rustle from the bed I holster my pistol. Just a flash of corrupt thinking. I keep my eyes locked on that baby. Maybe not so wrong. A forceful tap on my leg, I snap out of it, guard up hand right back on gun. A pen hits the floor. I’m breathing heavy. Heart beating at light speed. The deaf girl motions she needs to write. I pick up the pen and pass her a new piece of paper. She holds up her new sign. ‘I cannot feel my leg… Cut it off’
Problems run through my head, how to make sure it doesn’t infect, what the fuck am I going to make a prosthetic out of and what do I even cut it with. At the end of it all though I don’t have the resources to fix completely shattered bone. Her leg was already tearing hanging on barely by quickly rotting skin. She was right it needed to be disposed of.
The first cut into the bruised dying flesh with a kitchen knife is the loudest. The screaming squish of whatever surviving muscle is painful to my ears. I have the highest-proof liquor I could find and some plastic wrap sitting next to me on the bed. The nerves are dead. It’s strange to be sitting in silence cutting a living girl’s leg. The occasional twitch as the dead leg pulls on it’s living appendage. Hours of severing the moldering leg has built up a tolerance to the taste of vomit on my tongue. No bone to cut through. I clean the wound the best I can and plastic wrap the stump.
She scribbles something down on the paper. ‘I’m going to get antibiotics and food tomorrow.’
“No the fuck you are not.” I blurt it out. Her being deaf is completely removed from my mind for a brief second but she seems to get the idea.
‘I need antibiotics and the baby needs food’ Is she insane?
“I can go. You aren’t capable like this.” I look directly at her hoping she can read lips.
‘I’m going. I am capable.’
“With what leg?” With that, it’s the end of the conversation.
I fall asleep in an Ikea chair that night. It’s hard waking up that morning. All the energy was taken from me after yesterday. I brush the morning crust off my eyes. Where’s the deaf girl? Where’s the baby?
Even if I could call out in the towering urban echo chamber she wouldn’t be able to hear me. I start with the grocery store from yesterday. My steps grow heavier and heavier as I approach the atrocity from yesterday. My feet are cinderblocks in tar by the time I get to the door. The floor is covered in dried spit. Looking around the former grocery store electrifies me into paralysis. Layers of splintered flashbacks crowd my mind. It’s going to burst. I collapse to the ground, oxygen leaking out breath by breath. This is how I end. Not with a bang but with a whimper. The epitome of an existential failure.
A pitter-patter of paws land right next to me. I am greeted by a soft nuzzle. I can’t help but chuckle at the absurdity. It’s the damn coyote. I unravel. Years worth of terror spill out on the grocery store floor. Pent-up guilt of acts unspeakable released from their iron-clad cage. My daughter is front in center in my mind. I can still feel the glass from the car window, still feel the blood rushing to my head the world upside down, still feel the horror of a snapped neck on a seven-year-old girl. I failed her. I can’t fail someone else.
The coyote is close behind as I wander the streets bouncing from store to store. Nobody for miles. An old newspaper stand is sold out of material. As the sun goes down my worry mounts. Every second has a probability of the creature waking.
The holy mosaic shines in the center of that same crater. The church still stands tall despite the constant quaking. There’s a 2009 Sudan with the anti-biotics just ahead. Is the risk worth it? Off in the distance is a girl with a makeshift prosthetic and a backpack. She’s smart. I pick up my speed. The coyote follows until…
“CCRRRAAAAAAAAANNNNNGGGGGGGG” The creature lifts itself off the building, its alien features in full sight. The colors of it’s skin change from an urban camouflage to a deep black and orange. It’s spikes flail outward pushing the air around it. It’s tongue unfurls out of its mouth ready for attack. On a regular creature, the steel-like spider hairs on it’s palms and feet would microscopic but this thing matches the size of the 5 story apartment it just lifted itself off of. It climbs over the building crouching as it’s wandering tongue does all the work. It is in a predatory mode.
I freeze. There’s nothing I can do. I will lose again. I can’t lose again. “HEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY!!!” Its abdominous tongue freezes.
“BARK!” The coyote shifts its stance ready for the creature’s attack. “Grrrrrrrrr”
“HEEYYY!” I pick up a rock and toss it at the car window. The alarm ricochets through the abandoned sprawl. I’m not even sure if the girl has noticed yet. Or if she will even come across the car or what will happen to it but there’s a chance I can save her.
“CRUNCH” It moves its legs shifting its position. A low groan builds within its system. “wwwwwwwrrrrrRRRRRRRRRAAAAAA AA AA AAA AAA AAA KKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” Windows shatter, I am pushed to the ground. I look up at the sky. Ears ringing. “THUD” I am good. “THUD” I am whole. “THUD” I am fulfilled.