A shudder broke me from my sleep.
Yawning, I rolled over, and pushed some of the long brown hair from my eyes. Meg’s living room lay blanketed in shadow, cool and dry with the aid of her family’s air conditioning unit. My house hadn’t had working AC for years, and while I’d gotten used to sleeping in the hot Ohio summers, sometimes it felt nice to go to bed fresh, and wake up the same way.
A small green light from Kate’s phone charger cast a dim glow over the room. She’d curled up in her blue sleeping bag on the floor, with Meg draped over a nearby couch, and Lena snored softly from under her blanket on the coffee-colored recliner. Our unfinished game of monopoly sat on the coffee table, along with scattered chip bags, half-empty soda cans, and Kate’s left shoe from where we’d gotten into a shoe-throwing war and had almost broken a window. The smell of burned popcorn lingered from Lena’s grand inability to follow the instructions on the bag, and I realized from the sugary taste on the back of my tongue that I’d neglected to brush my teeth before falling asleep. Still, despite the chaos, the scene felt homey, tranquil even, as it always had whenever Meg invited us over for a sleepover at her parent’s house.
From where I reclined on the other couch, I smiled at various DVD cases Meg dug out for us, all the original Star Wars movies along with Ender’s Game and The Martian, a group favorite.
I’m friends with a bunch of nerds.
It hit me again, a barely perceivable tremor that seemed to emanate from somewhere under the plush couch, and for a second, I thought it might be Meg’s cat, Bruno.
Boom.
A few of the glass panes in the DVD cabinet rattled, and a faint shockwave rippled up from the floor into my chest. The concussive rumble echoed from somewhere further away outside the living room window, and through the shuttered blinds, I caught the smallest flash of light.
Wow. I didn’t think it called for rain. Must have been a big lightning bolt to shake the ground like—
Boom, boom, boom.
Something about the way the sounds roared, closer and closer with each successive blast made my blood run cold. That didn’t sound like lightning. In fact, it reminded me more of fireworks than anything else, but deeper, more baritone, with a spine-tingling amount of force behind each one.
I slid my legs out from under the fuzzy Han Solo blanket Meg loaned me and padded over to the nearest window to pry one of the shades aside.
Quiet banks of puffy white fog greeted my eye, and the old-fashioned wrought iron streetlamps glowed like stars among the twisting humid clouds. Houses lined the empty asphalt streets, interspersed with neatly kept lawns, and motionless wind chimes suspended from their freshly painted front porches.
“Wonder how much that cost.” I eyed a beautiful house painted silver-gray with gold and white accents, topped by a round turreted window that reminded me of a fairytale castle. “I couldn’t afford the doorknob on that place.”
Even for such a small and rural place as Barron County Ohio, there were poor and rich areas. Most of the wealthier and middle-class families tended to either live in the county’s largest and only city, Black Oak, or on private land in the countryside. For the low-income families who couldn’t afford land payments or higher rent, we eked out a living in the smaller town of Collingswood on the opposite end of the county.
When the other well-to-do families started to move out due to falling property values, Meg’s father stayed. As the owner of the county’s second largest sawmill, he’d driven all around town with his wife, Clara to donate tools, materials, and even helped with repairs for people from all walks of life. It was mostly thanks to Travis Ralston that Collingswood wasn’t a run-down shantytown, though our prissy mayor, Gloria Sarasti, would never admit that her taxpayer-funded social programs had been outshone by what she referred to as ‘a woodcutting hillbilly’. Travis treated all us girls like his own daughters since we could walk, and Clara had surprised us with pizza for the sleepover, even though we were all eighteen, Kate and I working our own part-time jobs already.
Wheeeeeeewhooooooo.
My eyebrows hitched higher on my face and frowned at the sound of several police sirens flaring to life in the distance. A reddish glow hung over the dark horizon to the west, and as I stood by the window, I could just pick up more pops and cracks further out. Collingswood had its share of problems, mostly drugs and the occasional domestic abuser, but it was rare to hear sirens at night. It was even rarer still to hear so many gunshots, even in a county so pro-gun that they sold shotgun shells in the general store next to the potato chips and hotdog buns.
A flash lit up the town’s sleepy skyline, and I saw the shockwave slither through the air.
Boom.
This one shook the house with violent force, and I stumbled back from the window to trip over the stirring Kate. Her phone charger’s light flickered out, and in the streets outside, all the streetlights went dark at the same time.
“Ow.” Kate shoved me off her legs in irritation. “Jeez, Sarah, where’s the fire?”
I didn’t say anything, my head cocked to the side as I listened. Every neighborhood dog began to bark up a storm, the world outside much darker than it had been ten minutes ago, with only the thin rays of moonlight shining through the gaps in the window shades. Somewhere in the murky streets, I caught a strange screech-thumping sound that reminded me of the steel mill my uncle worked at in Pennsylvania, a heavy repetitive thud that didn’t fit in with any of the normal sounds a tiny farming town made at night.
Swallowing, I suppressed a shiver, and rubbed at the goosebumps on my arms.
It’s almost like footsteps.
Meg sat up on the couch and rubbed her eyes. “Ugh, shut the TV off, it’s 3 in the freaking morning.”
“Meg,” I shuffled backward on my feet, and every impulse in my body quivered. “Something’s wrong. Seriously, guys get up, something’s happening.”
A beam of bright blue light shot out from the dark hallway, and Clara darted into view, a flashlight in one bony hand, her tired eyes wide with muted panic. “Up, everyone get up, now.”
“But mom, we—”
Wham.
Meg never got to finish her complaint, as the echo of the front door slamming reached our ears, and heavy boots thumped on the kitchen floor.
Clara lunged to put herself between the opposite hallway and us, her free hand balled in a trembling fist. Meg’s mother was a gentle, quiet woman, and to see her acting like some cornered mother bear defending her young sent chills down my spine.
Am I having a bad dream? How many flaming hot Cheetos did I eat?
A lumbering shadow emerged, and a blood-covered hand pressed flat against one wall.
Meg recoiled on the couch, Kate and I backed up to the opposite side of the room, and Lena ducked behind the sofa I’d been sleeping on. Clara took a frightened step back but raised her arm to swing with a white-knuckled fist.
“It’s me! Clara, it’s me.”
From the darkness came a red and black flannel shirt soaked with fresh blood, along with a pair of old blue-jeans spoiled in a similar fashion. Both muscled arms were coated in red and black spatters, and a gore-smeared hunting knife trembled in the left hand. Many of the stains on the shirt resembled handprints, some red, some a weird clotted black, and above the bushy salt-and-pepper beard, Travis’s dark eyes seemed to stare through his wife in a weary, stunned gaze.
“Are you okay?” Clara shuffled closer to hug him, but Travis waved her off with his free hand.
“I’m alright, none of its mine. Get the girls and put as much food into bags as you can.”
“Dad?” Meg frowned, her brow furrowed over her crossed arms. “Come on, is this some sort of—”
“Just do as I say.” He growled, Travis’s dark eyes flashing with a ferocity that startled me. “Get the food and stay away from the windows.”
The other girls stared at him, but something in his tone set off an alarm in the back of my brain, and I moved to jerk the shade at the window closed. I grew up on the poor side of town, born into a family of factory workers and house cleaners, but mom and dad had been worried about preparedness ever since the pandemic started spreading a few years ago. They couldn’t afford to stockpile much in ways of supplies, but mom drilled all kinds of lessons into my head about what to do when it was time to leave town in a hurry.
Water, food, clothes, and run like hell.
Shaking my head to clear the sleepiness away, I stumbled to my overnight bag to yank on a set of blue jeans instead of my silky shorts. It wasn’t the time to be squeamish about this sort of thing, and I doubted Travis or Clara would be appalled about me changing in their living room when Travis looked like he’d just butchered a deer with his shirt-buttons.
Meg groaned in annoyance beside me, the squeaky fear in her voice giving way to a pouty whine. “This had better not be another stupid tornado drill. I swear, Mayor Sarasti has the worst time—”
A low throbbing roar thundered just overhead, and I peeked between the shades to see a gray helicopter swoop low across the sky, a powerful white searchlight probing at the streets below.
“Attention. Attention. This is an emergency broadcast. Please remain calm.”
With all the emotion of a broken alarm clock, an artificial female voice droned from some loudspeaker mounted to the circling helicopter, backlit by the flickers of more booms in the distance.
“All citizens report to the city center for evacuation immediately. This is not a drill. Do not attempt to shelter in place. Do not approach any individuals who may act erratic. Do not look up at bright lights above you. Please move in an orderly fashion to prevent accidents. Have your personal ID ready at the designated loading area. Attention. Attention . . .”
Ice pounded through my veins, and I forced myself to breath slow, my heart racing. This was real. This was really happening. After all the talk by my parents, all the tinfoil-hat videos they’d showed me from the internet, all the books written by men convinced the end was nigh . . . here it was.
Is it the Russians? Did they finally launch? Are we at war?
“I want to go home.” Lena sat on the carpet, and pulled her knees to her chest, seeming to revert to a six-year-old under the weight of the crushing fear that hung in the air all around us.
“It’s gotta be a prank . . . right?” Kate made a half-giggle of nervousness even as she too yanked on sweatpants and a different T-shirt.
“Just hurry up.” Clara sped around the room to gather photo albums, candles, and matches into a suitcase. Travis disappeared into the kitchen, where the sound of food cans tumbling into a bag echoed after him.
Meg moved in a daze, staring at her hands like she couldn’t believe her own eyes and ears. I felt bad for her. She’d grown up in a nice house, with everything she could ever want, and two loving parents who raised her into a rather decent human being. For her, this was unimaginable.
For me, I counted the seconds with bated breath as we dove into the inky-black kitchen, where Travis and Clara stuffed our bags with water bottles, canned food, and pill bottles from the medicine cabinet. How long did it take a nuclear missile to reach its target? Were we within the blast range? Shouldn’t we take cover?
If it’s a nuclear attack . . . then why is Travis covered in bloody handprints?
Pushing such horrific logic from my mind, I hefted the strap of my teal duffel higher on one shoulder and focused on pulling my hair into a ponytail to keep it out of my face.
Bang.
Crash.
Screams echoed from somewhere down the street, gunshots ringing out within a few blocks. I could recognize the deafening bark of shotguns, pistols, and rifles spitting lead into the night. That wasn’t normal. It was illegal to fire a gun in town, and the sound of breaking glass meant that the bullets weren’t flying at backyard targets or into the air in some reckless form of celebration.
“There’s something out there.” I whispered aloud, more to myself than anyone else.
Thud.
We all froze at the sound of dense material smacking into the locked front door. The fancy brass knob jiggled, and a soft tick, tick, tick reached my ears, like tiny drumbeats.
No, not drumbeats.
Fingernails. The sporadic tapping of untrimmed fingernails on the door.
Travis stepped out of the dark again, this time with an M1 carbine clamped in his shaking hands, the muzzle pointed toward the noises.
His eyes glowed with a contagious primal fear, and he held up a finger to his lips, pointing to the door that led to their attached garage. “Get to the truck.”
Even Meg didn’t protest as Clara shoved us through the kitchen, casting furtive glances back at her husband.
Thud.
Thud, thud.
Whatever was on the other side of the front door hurled itself against the oaken boards, the planks creaking under the assault.
“Go, go now!” Travis shoved me into the garage with the others and jammed the door shut behind him. On the other side, the muffled groan of collapsing wood sent prickles of dread through me, and I tasted acid in my throat.
I climbed into the back seat of the crew-cab pickup truck and tried to ignore the growing clap-clap of bare feet on linoleum in the kitchen, something moving through the house toward us on all fours. No, make that multiple somethings. Even the panicked whispers of my friends and the creaking truck doors couldn’t hide the grunted breaths, the low chittering coos, clicks and croaks that made my skin crawl in the dark.
Start the engine, start the engine, start the freaking engine . . .
I huddled next to Lena, Kate and Meg slouched on the other side of her, and Travis cranked the truck’s engine to life. Clara muttered low prayers under her breath, her pale hands fumbling with the seatbelt buckle at her hip. The door to the garage slid upward behind us with a low trundle of its electric motor, and the bright LED headlights clicked on.
Despite the blinding flash, I stared as the door I’d ran through slowly swung open.
Grimy fingers curled around the edge of the white painted pine, the fingernails chipped, the skin so pale it almost appeared gray. A matted, greasy head of dark hair poked around the corner at knee height, as if the thing had scuttled on all fours through the kitchen, and a pair of milk-white eyes gleamed back at me.
A smile, broad, and laced with an eerie delight rippled across the creature’s face, revealing row after row of square, peg-shaped brown teeth.
“What is that?” Meg squeaked, pawing at the back of her father’s seat for answers. “Dad, what is that? Dad?”
Travis threw the truck into reverse, and the vehicle flew into the fog. A blur of grey limbs leapt through the garage as we sped away, several vaguely human shapes bounding across the dark lawn on all fours, with big, wide grins. Crammed into the backseat of the pickup, I could only stare out at the shadows in stunned horror, unable to move or scream.
This . . . this isn’t real. How is this real?
People flooded from their houses, some pulling out in cars and trucks like us, others running on foot, with more than a few being pursued by the crawling nightmares. White-eyed figures surged from the northwestern side of town, through streets, alleyways, and yards, jumping at people whenever they got close. They bit, clawed, and tore their victims apart like ravenous dogs, throwing chunks of flesh and blood everywhere. The entire world felt as though it had turned upside down in a matter of minutes, and I could only watch with open-mouthed horror.
Bwwwooonnnggg.
“Oh my God.” Clara stared up through the windshield, her eyes wide as saucers, at whatever had emitted the loud, electro-synth foghorn blast.
“Don’t look. Baby, don’t look at it.” Travis floored the accelerator and swerved to avoid hitting a huddle of people that stood frozen in the roadway, their eyes on the sky in rigid fear.
More strange foghorns blared through the misty air, and a beam of white light slid across the asphalt just down the street. The eerie metallic screech-thumps I’d heard earlier clanked above the din, and a huge shadow moved in the low fog that hung over the tops of the houses, angular and vaguely insectoid.
“Travis, were do we go?” Carla clung to her overhead handle for support as Travis drove like a bat out of hell, her wide eyes fixed on the hellscape outside. “Where are we supposed to—”
“The government has soldiers near the courthouse.” Travis gritted his teeth and plowed through a handful of the white-eyed freaks, their bodies crunching with a strange wooden density against the underside of the pickup. “They’ll get us out, just don’t look at the lights.”
Bwwwooonnnggg.
“What’s making those sounds?” Lena slouched lower in her seat, shaking so hard she could have had hypothermia and no one would have known the difference.
“There’s something behind us.” Kate’s shout caused my eardrum to ring, and I screwed both eyes shut to clap my hands over them.
Crash.
In the road ahead, a red Buick crumpled under an enormous piece of vertical steel I-beam that seemed to plummet from nowhere. Moving too fast to stop, I had a split second to duck as the rear bumper of the car raced toward our radiator.
Travis yanked on the steering wheel, and Clara screamed with the shrillness of a tea kettle. Lena went flying over the dash, and Kate’s body crushed into mine. Meg’s face slammed off the headrest of her father’s seat, and tiny blue-green bits of glass sprayed across my field of vision.
Rubber screeched, brakes shrieked, and a loud grinding squeal pierced the air as my world lurched to a halt.
Beads of broken glass stuck to everything, my clothes, my loose hair, the seat upholstery, and the floor mats. The front windshield was completely gone, only a few jagged shards left around the edges from where it had been. Hot metal and burned tire rubber wafted on the cool breeze, and though my ears still rang, I could make out the screams of people running by. My mouth tasted of coppery blood, and my skin had gone numb from all the adrenaline.
Stunned, I pushed myself back against the seat from the bent-over position I’d been in and gazed down at my arms and legs in a stupor.
I’m . . . I’m okay. I think I’m okay. Nothing feels broken, at least, not yet.
From behind the plume of his deployed airbag, Travis turned to grunt something to me, his forehead bleeding from a nasty cut near his hairline.
Flash.
Bright light filled the cab, pried into every nook and cranny of my eyesight, and drowned out everything else with its blinding intensity. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, transfixed by some unseen hand that forced me to stay still, and beckoned from deep inside the aura.
Something tickled at the base of my ringing eardrums, soft, and subtle.
Whispers.
So many whispers, like tendrils of cold tickling my consciousness. They echoed all around me, some close, some far, but with different voices, the words indistinguishable. I couldn’t tell if they were happy, or sad, pained, or excited. They just persisted, a wave of disembodied humanity calling to each other through the void.
“Look for the light.”
Instinct shouted at me to move, to shut my eyes, to run, but I couldn’t. I seemed to be held back by a separate, sludgy portion of my brain that didn’t want to. I wanted to bathe in the light, to sit here and soak it all in, to feel the warm embrace of the cables as they wound around me . . .
Cables?
As if shocked by static, my right eye twitched, the cornea stung, and I blinked in reflex.
They slithered through the broken windows, greasy braided steel cables moving on their own like snakes to wrap around my ankles, and slide up the legs, arms, and torsos of the others in the truck. Travis, Clara, Meg, and Kate sat still as statues, with eyes wide and unblinking, their faces glowing in the aura of the light. The source of the light hovered right outside the pickup truck; a spotlight so powerful I could barely keep my eyes shielded with one hand. My heart roared, the whispers turned to dizzying static inside my skull, and I fought the urge to vomit.
I forced my rubbery arms to move and clawed at the nearby door handle.
Run. I need to run.
The handle clicked, and I threw the truck door open, kicking at the icy cables latched around my ankles with panic. They seemed to be surprised at my resistance and slackened enough for me to wriggle free.
With a yelp, I tumbled to the wet asphalt, and skittered away from the light on my hands and knees. The beam shifted, pivoted to follow me as I fled, and a deafening electro-synth roar slammed into me like a hurricane of sound. My head pounded, every limb shook like a leaf, but I made myself crawl as fast as I could go, the hard pavement scraping into my bare palms. I didn’t know what stood behind me, or where it had come from, but deep within my mind, I knew that the light wasn’t as good as it wanted me to believe. It wasn’t true light, like sunlight, candlelight, or even starlight.
It was fake, mechanical, a synthetic lure to bait for our kind in like moths to a flame.
Cool grass swished under my hands, a yard greeting me with a picket fence and nearby house. All I had to do was hop the fence, and sprint for the town center.
Sucking in deep gasps of fog-tinged air to clear my head, I tried to push myself up to run.
Almost there . . .
Vice-like fingers locked around my left shoe, and I twisted onto my side in an effort to squirm free.
“Sarah!” Kate clung to my leg in desperation, even as a set of grimy cables wound around her feet to drag her backward. “Help me!”
More screams emanated from the pickup truck, and I turned to see the cables slashing and writhing inside it with violence, spraying thick coats of red viscera across the cracked back window. Travis groaned in agony, Meg’s cry hit a shrill pitch, and Clara gurgled as if her lungs were filled with water. Something shredded them, eviscerated them alive, and the mass of swirling steel led to a looming shadow high above the surrounding banks of fog.
For the first time that night, I looked up.
It stood hunched over the wrecked truck with eight steel legs planted on either side of the street. They were made of I-beams, with more cables of various sizes running up and down the legs like veins. These led to a strange spinal column that seemed to be all sorts of steel fused together, ending in a wide, satellite dish for a head, ringed with the bright white lights I’d shaken loose from earlier. A lone siren hung bolted just under the dish, and beneath that, a tangle of anemone-like cables moved with independent ease, grabbing at everything human they could reach. The grease on the cables was blood, I realized. Congealing chunks of flesh, blood, and organs from previous victims, many of whom swung limply underneath the belly of the monstrosity like gallows-victims.
Spinning myself around on the grass edge of the lawn, I scrambled back over to Kate, and pulled hard on her sweaty hands.
I have to get her loose.
“Kick.” I gritted my teeth and leaned backward with all my might, the soles of my shoes sliding on the damp ground. “Kate, fight it, I can’t pull you!”
She screamed and thrashed, the cables gripping tighter and tighter by the second. My shoes slipped on the asphalt, and I went down, the two of us dragged slowly toward the truck over the tarmac. My pulse throbbed in both temples, and I struggled to grip Kate’s hands, keeping my head craned away from the creature so the light wouldn’t get me a second time.
A line of nearby bricks from the old section of sidewalk caught my eye, and my heart leapt.
Stretching out one arm, I strained, the tips of my fingers brushing the nearest one, the red brick rocking loosely in its decrepit spot on the corner. Old mortar crumbled around it, so close, yet so far.
Kate’s hand slid from my grasp, and she shrieked, clawing at the ground in vain.
No.
I snatched up the brick, and threw myself to my feet, both legs unstable jelly underneath me.
Staggering over the painted lines in the road, I raised the brick high, and brought it down as hard as I could.
Clank.
It bounced off the cables with a predictable impotency, not leaving so much as a dent, but the serpentine bits of steel recoiled at the attack, and Kate jerked her feet away. I wound my fingers into the collar of her T-shirt, and half-dragged her, the light swinging back toward me once again.
Bwwwooonnnggg.
“Come on.” I limped Kate through the yard, the two of us diving through the garden gate to avoid another sweeping beam of white. More screams rang in the dark, and the light didn’t follow, as if the enormous metal spider decided to hunt easier prey in the chaotic street.
In the dark shadows of the backyard, Kate and I slid to the ground behind a small garden shed and gasped for air. My stomach threatened to overpower me, and to my right, Kate leaned over to heave up her pizza from dinner. The screech-thumps of the giant machines continued all over town, some in the west, some in the north, others in the south. Only the east stayed mostly quiet, with the exception of a few helicopters circling low in that direction.
The evacuation. If the east is quiet, that must be safe. We have to head east.
“You okay?” My words rasped hoarse and dry in my throat, but I poked at Kate’s shaking shoulders with a pointer finger.
“No.” She arched her back to vomit some more bile onto the grass. “They’re dead. They’re all freaking dead.”
Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked hard to push them back. Meg had been my friend since the first grade, as had Lena. Travis and Clara were like second parents to me. Now they were gone, horribly so, ripped apart in their own truck by . . . what exactly?
Don’t. Don’t think about it. Just get away.
“We have to keep moving.” I hauled myself up, and reached down to pull Kate along with me, some of the dizziness fading from my mind. “Can you walk?”
Kate’s legs collapsed under her, and she let out a frustrated, terrified whimper. “I feel like I’m gonna pass out. God, my head hurts. What . . . what was that thing?”
In the darkness a few yards away, a loud shriek split the night, and I crouched lower, my heart racing. The white-eyed creatures were getting close.
“Kate, listen to me.” I hissed, trying to listen for signs of movement in the next grassy lot over, the skinny, white-painted privacy fence all that stood between us and the terrible unknown. “You have to focus, okay? I need you to walk. Breathe deep.”
Her watery eyes met mine, and Kate sniffled. “A-And if I c-can’t? Don’t leave me, Sarah, please. Please don’t leave me here.”
Guilt cut through me like a knife. I’d left her once already, I realized, back in the truck. I hadn’t checked to see if she’d broken free from the light’s hold on her mind, hadn’t gone back to drag her from the cables’ grasp. I’d ran like a rat, left them all to die. If I’d gone back, could I have saved Meg too? Or Travis, or Clara? I hadn’t even checked to see where Lena had gone, if she was still alive, or smeared all over the pavement like a squished bug. My best friends since forever . . . and I’d left them all to die.
Selfish. A selfish, useless, coward. That’s what you are, Sarah McGregor.
Kneeling, I hugged my friend close, and forced down the massive lump that tried to choke me. “I won’t. I won’t, I promise. Just try, for me.”
She sighed and pushed herself off the grass again.
This time, her wobbly legs held, and I draped her arm over my shoulders to take some of the weight. “Let’s take this slow, okay? Block by block. If we can get to the courthouse, or the east side, maybe we can get away from all this.”
Kate took several deep breaths and sniffled hard to regain her composure. “My aunt . . . my aunt lives in Black Oak, she has an apartment there. If we can find a car, she’ll let us stay.”
My mind flashed to my own family in that moment, and it startled me that I hadn’t even thought of them until now. Where were my parents, or my two little brothers? Were they already in the evacuation area? My mother would have died rather than left without me, but with all these manic freaks and the metal spider things walking around, could she or dad have made it this far? Would they even bother when Ash and Brian were at stake?
No, I couldn’t get muddled now. My family was fine, I told myself. They were waiting at the courthouse, safe and sound, with dozens of heavily armed soldiers to protect them. They had to be.
We wandered out the back gate on the other side of the house, moving through several yards and patios to avoid the carnage. Everywhere people either ran, or lay dying, pursued by the white-eyed things, and hunted from above by the metal spiders. The air tasted of burned gunpowder and tires, black smoke filling the sky in various directions, and the noise from gunfire, explosions, and circling helicopters was deafening. Dozens of houses burned with bright orange, red, and yellow flames, lighting up the skyline for miles around. The white-eyed freaks kept shrieking with eerie glee, and the strange foghorn calls of the spiders preceded their massive footfalls. Several of the gargantuan machines were silhouetted on the horizon, skittering through the fiery town in a haphazard line, which reminded me of the imperial war machines from Meg’s favorite Star Wars movie.
And I laughed at how absurd big metal walkers were. Stupid. I had no idea.
Bright lights and roaring gears flared to life just as Kate and I were halfway across a street, and my heart stopped.
Metal screeched not far off, but instead of the thumping of huge radio-tower legs, I heard a truck door slam, and the low growl of a diesel engine.
“Hands up!” A gruff voice barked, and I looked up in time to see the barrel of a rifle leveled at my face.
Thank God.
“Don’t shoot!” I raised the hand that wasn’t supporting Kate high, and almost sobbed in relief. “Please, don’t shoot.”
Four squat Humvees idled in the road, having skidded to a halt right in front of us. They were all painted the same slate gray as the uniforms the soldiers wore and bore long machine guns on the turrets that the gunners manned with twitching fingers, their eyes on the alleyways and rooftops. I’d seen them before in the outer roads around Barron County in the past few weeks, and the local papers had claimed they were ‘federal consultants’ for the County Sheriff to help with cleanup due to some industrial accident over at the New Wilderness Wildlife Reserve. I’d thought nothing of the rumors that they were here to cover up some strange goings-on in the countryside, but now that the men glared at me over the holographic sights on their battle-rifles, I couldn’t help but put two-and-two together.
The monsters. They’re here for the monsters.
“Castle, this is Stalker 3-Actual, we’ve got unarmed civilians on the west side needing evac. Permission to load em, over?” In a gruff Australian accent, the man with a Rangers lead the way tattoo on his lower arm clicked the talk button on his radio mic. I didn’t dare move closer, not with the machine gunner aiming his bulky weapon right at my chest.
From inside the Humvee, whose door still hung open, I heard the radio crackle, and subdued versions of it rang in the earpieces of all the men nearby.
“Stalker 3-Actual, this is Castle, negative on the civvies, we are already over capacity. Break contact with the enemy and withdraw to Rally Point 14, over.”
From behind his bushy beard, I could still see the man’s frown, his eyes narrowing into angry slits. “Castle, I say again, I’ve got two unarmed civilians here that need evac. They’re bloody kids, sir, I can’t just leave them here, over.”
Kate’s eyes met mine, and we both looked over our shoulder at the relatively abandoned side-street behind us. A shadow on a nearby alleyway showed something creeping on all fours, with long matted hair hanging low. If they left us, we were as good as dead. My mind swirled with all sorts of things, desperate ideas on what to do. I considered everything from charging the men, to begging on my knees, anything to get to safety. Never in my life had I felt more helpless.
“Stalker 3-Actual, I say again, you are ordered to withdraw to Rally Point 14. Primarch is on standby to carry out the Clean Sweep Protocol in ten mikes. You’ve done all you can, now get your men out of there, sergeant. Castle out.”
The soldier lowered his hand from the radio mic and stared at Kate and I for a few moments.
Oh no.
“Please,” I half-sobbed, shaking my head at the inevitable. “Please, we don’t need much, just take us with you, please . . .”
He stalked forward, both dark eyes fixed on me, the rifle gripped in one hand. Atop the truck, the gunner squinted down his sights, and I understood now that there would be no escape. I would never see my family again. My goofy friends who I’d laughed with, giggled about cute boys with, and complained about schoolwork with would never be remembered. It would end in a hail of gunfire, like we’d never been there in the first place.
All because we saw things we weren’t supposed to see.
The man slid his arm under Kate’s other shoulder and nodded at the Humvee. “Come on kid, get in.”
Kate blinked at him, and I almost fell over in shock. “Wait, for real?”
“Aussie, we gotta move, man.” The machine gunner called down from his perch in the truck turret in a deep-south drawl, as more shrieks echoed closer in the foggy streets. “There’s freaks all over the place.”
“So keep your eyes open, Tex.” Aussie retorted, and helped Kate to the rear driver’s side door, yanking it open to let us climb into the cool, dark interior of the armored truck. A middle-aged woman and two small children, a boy and a girl, huddled in the opposite side, their eyes, hair, and clothes a mess with black and red handprints. An elderly couple sat atop the differential cover between the seats, and in the space behind the back seats, I could see eyes and faces peering from the rear cargo area, as if the men had been picking up every straggler for the last three blocks.
The driver, a stoic man with a curly beard and mahogany skin looked on with casual indifference, his voice tinged in a Jamaican tilt. “Corporate will lose their minds if they find out we got civvies on board.”
“They can suck a big veiny one.” Aussie shut our door and walked around to climb into the passenger side front seat. He threw a glance back at Kate and I, his fierce expression softening into something kinder that reminded me of my father. “I got a sister her age back in Melbourne. I’m not leaving them out there just cause some suit wants to play God.”
The driver smiled a pearly-white grin and shifted the truck into drive. “Softie.”
Aussie snatched at the trucks radio and nodded to his driver. “All Stalker 3 units, this is Stalker 3-Actual, we are oscar-mike for Rally Point 14. Stay frosty lads, there’s still a lot of skinnies out there. Stalker 3-1 out.”
The convoy jolted back into motion, driving at breakneck speed down the roadway. In his gun turret, Tex called out targets as he saw them, his beefy weapon chattering into the night as we careened through packs of scattered, white-eyed freaks, and swerved around another metal spider. Kate broke down into a silent cascade of tears, and I forced myself to breath slow, even as the tension in my chest ratcheted up to a hundred. The further we got from the center of town, the more military vehicles began to show up in the outer roads, alleyways, and streets, everything from Humvees to full-sized tanks. I noticed that many bore smoking, purple-red weapons, as if they’d been firing non-stop for hours, and there were splashes of gore on more than one of them, handprints a common theme. Overhead, the helicopters swooped away toward the nearby hills, like birds who know there’s a storm coming.
“All units, this is Titan; be advised, Clean Sweep is a go for Sector 5. All necessary coordinates will be relayed to Primarch. Time to splash is three-mikes. Withdraw to outer perimeter and stand by. Titan out.”
At the deep voice booming from the radio, the driver and Aussie shared a serious frown.
“Man, that’s some heavy arty they’re bringing in.” The Jamaican driver wove through someone’s lawn to avoid a bottleneck of wrecked cars that blocked the street. “Did the central evac make it out?”
“No clue, mate.” Aussie scratched his bearded chin and cast a nervous glance toward the burning horizon. “My guess is those New Wilderness blokes are pushing way more organics and technos than our ISR boys thought. Never thought they’d flush a whole herd of them down on us like this. Right on top of their own people . . .”
I sat up, not wanting to give away that I was listening, even as we rolled by columns of fleeing trucks, tanks, and armored cars. I’d been to New Wilderness once or twice before. It was just a quaint little wildlife reserve, with exotic animals in fenced in grasslands, and a gorgeous campus sitting atop a nice, high ridgeline. I remembered having a mild crush on one of the tour guides a year ago, though I never had the courage to ask him for his number, being only 17 and shy as a mouse at the time of my visit. What did the kind, smiling staff at the park know about these creatures? Why hadn’t they said anything?
More importantly, why would they drive them straight into our homes?
As if on cue, the radio crackled to life with the chillingly calm voices of men I didn’t know.
“Primarch this is Titan, requesting fire mission, over.”
Aussie swore and glanced out his window at a rear-view mirror. “Rocco, punch it, now.”
Rocco jammed his foot on the gas, and the Humvee roared into a dead sprint down the last road out of Collingswood, the others following, as everything with wheels made a desperate dash for Route 142. Outside, hordes of panicked townsfolk ran or limped in droves out of town, swarms of civilian vehicles clogged the road, and many military trucks simply swung around them to drive in the grass. People waved, cried, and pleaded for us to stop, but no one so much as slowed down.
All the while, the voices of doom droned on over the radio, and though I didn’t quite understand every bit of what they were saying, I knew enough to make me shudder with imminent dread.
“Titan, this is Primarch, battery of twelve M270A2’s, 144 HE warheads, standing by for fire mission, over.”
Reaching back to jerk on the pant-legs of Tex in his gun turret, Aussie shouted above the rumble of the diesel engine. “Tex, wave at those other gunners and tell them to get their hatches closed. We’ve got big ordinance coming in!”
Kate began to hyper-ventilate and squeezed my arm so harm I thought she’d snap it. “M-My parents. Oh God, my parents. They’re still back there, Sarah, I . . . I know they are.”
I opened my mouth to say something encouraging, but the radio drowned me out.
“Fire mission, grid: JS917985, twelve guns, all rounds, thermobaric, delay in effect. Target number CRB2598, over.”
“Primarch copies all, message to observer, grid: JS917985, twelve guns, all rounds, thermobaric delay in effect. Target number CRB2598, splash in ten seconds.”
“Cover!” Sliding his bullet-proof window down for a few precious moments, Aussie leaned his reddened face out to scream at the multitude of walking civilians that we rolled past. “Get under something! Take cover, take cover now!”
One of the kids in the back seat started crying at the top of his lungs, and from inside the trunk cargo area of the Humvee, I could hear more people sobbing, whispering, a few praying in loud, wavering begs to whoever might be listening. The road sloped upward as the convoy climbed through the tangled mass of traffic-jammed civilian cars to reach a hill overlooking Collingswood, and I could see the fire-lit streets below, the homes engulfed in flames, the wrecked cars, and three of the steel spiders still rampaging through the east side of town with fury.
My house is down there. My room, my computer, my fami—no, they’re not still there, they’re not. They’re somewhere safe, they all are.
I gripped Kate in a tight embrace to keep her from looking, but made myself stare out the dirty bullet-proof glass, needing to see it for myself.
“Shot, over.”
Somewhere far over the distant horizon to the north, the sky lit up with a kaleidoscope of flashing white lights, and streaks of fire soared into the sky, dozens upon dozens, like shooting stars.
“Shot, out”
Kate wailed into my shoulder, and Aussie slammed his window shut, crossing himself in the Catholic way over and over again.
Ka-boom.
All the rockets came down at once, exploding so close together that the cacophony molded into one enormous eruption. The world lit up bright as daylight, and for a split second, I could see everything around me with perfect clarity. I saw the church where I’d performed an Easter play when I was little, saw the tiny high school I’d always called a prison, saw the neighborhood where my house was.
Out of instinct, I shut my eyes, but not soon enough that I didn’t get a snapshot of it imprinted into my mind forever. The shockwave rocked the truck a few seconds after the flash, and everything in Collingswood turned to fiery dust. Buildings were incinerated, cars thrown into the air, and trees caught on fire a quarter mile out from the town center. The courthouse, surrounded by cars and a heavy shadow that must have been people, crumbled like it was made of Lego blocks. Heat licked at my face, even through the closed bullet-proof window, as the very air caught fire. With one great, hateful roar, the battle between man and monster reached a crescendo in Collingswood . . . and then . . .
Silence.
I opened my eyes to see a crater the size of a small town burning with hellish intensity, some flames as tall as a three-story building. Thick black smoke blotted out the stars, and car alarms went off from every civilian car on the road beside us. But compared to what had been, the screams, horns, gunshots, and shrieks, the night was quiet now.
Deadly quiet.
Once more, the radio sounded its mournful tone.
“Primarch, this is Titan, good effect on target. BDA is 100 over 100. Titan out.”
Putting my head down alongside Kate’s I screwed my eyes shut, and sobbed, because I knew then in my heart that she was right.
My family was still down there.