My eyes threatened to open as something cold and wet dripped onto my forehead. It ran from one side to the other as I lay there motionless. It was annoying, but not so much that I wouldn’t be able to sleep through it. Over the last two years I’d slept through much worse, but for some reason I kept slipping further and further away from my dream. In the brief few seconds since the cold liquid had begun to pelt me, I was already forgetting it.
The dream was slipping away, bit by bit, like grains of sand through my fingers. I didn’t want that. I couldn’t let it end. It had been about a time when we were still happy. When we’d been safe. I willed my mind to sink deeper and reclaim what I was losing.
Slowly, that peaceful scene began to paint itself onto the canvas of dreams once more. A beach. Georgina sitting on a picnic blanket. She looked so beautiful in her favorite blue dress. Then again, that woman could be wearing a burlap sack and my heart would still catch fire. Her long brown hair flowed over her shoulders, her eyes were full of love and promise as she looked up at me. I felt the dream take me again as she leaned back slightly, supported by one arm as she rested the other across her rounded stomach. I guess it’s safe to say Juliet was in my dream too.
She motioned me closer and said something, but I couldn’t make it out. All I heard was a muffled sound, as if she were talking into a pillow. Over and over, she repeated it. Each time, the smile left her face a little bit more, and a fear grew in her eyes. Desperation began overtaking her. I glanced up as the blue skies of my dream quickly darkened into a canvas of sinister black clouds, swirling into one another, like two violent black rivers at the confluence. Lightning slammed into the ocean just off the shore and the winds blew roughly against me, almost making me lose my balance. The ground shook—and behind me the world fractured and split open into an endless black abyss.
A soul-shattering roar erupted from the darkness and I took a step back, fear consuming me. Two hands grabbed my shoulders, and I turned to face my wife. She was terrified. I could finally hear what she had been shouting at me.
“Corbin, wake up!”
A clap of thunder jolted me awake. My eyes opened and I tried to remember where the hell I was. Everything was out of focus. Luckily, the pain I suddenly felt all over helped to counter that. If you could call that luck, I mean.
I groaned and rubbed my neck as the world came back into focus. I was in a car that was clearly not upright, and the seatbelt was digging into my neck and hip as it cradled me against gravity. Out of the cracked driver’s side window I could see a pissed-off sky that was trying to drown the car. The shattered passenger window was letting mud press up into what used to be a clean interior.
Between me and the wet earth though, was the kid. The one I was supposed to be protecting. The one that they had said could save us all. Who could save my daughter. I put a hand to her neck to make sure she still had a pulse.
Thank God, she’s just unconscious.
Her head was resting just above the broken glass, but most of her hair was going for a swim in the watery mud.
“—orbin, are you there? Corbin answer me damn it!”
Jerry’s nasally panicked voice came through over the radio. I reached forward to turn down the volume, then grabbed the mic and responded.
“Yeah, I’m still breathing, you weasel. Calm down.”
I could hear him let out a sigh of relief, and the people who were with him back at the base were talking nervously in the background.
“What the hell happened? Your tracker showed you stop suddenly about twenty minutes ago and we haven’t been able to reach you since.”
The haze that had been shrouding my memory began to lift and I remembered the events that led me to my current situation. “Swerved to dodge a deer and we hydroplaned right off the road. Car went for a little roll after that.” I grunted as I slowly extricated myself from the seatbelt and lowered myself to stand where the passenger window had once been.
“The kid! Is the kid okay?!”
“I’m fine, thank you for asking. And yeah, she’s just knocked out.”
“Corbin, there’s no way they didn’t hear you crash. You have to move. Without her, there’s no cure.”
My mind flashed to my daughter, hooked up to all the machines that were barely keeping her alive in the medical wing of the base.
“The helo is touching down at the extraction point at sixteen-thirty.”
“We’ll be there. Corbin, out.”
I dropped the mic and let it dangle as I gently tried to shake her awake.
“Callie. C’mon, wake up. Talk to me, Kid.”
The teenager moaned and started to stir. She opened her eyes and looked at me. A thin line of dried blood ran down the side of her forehead. She must have hit the window.
“Corbin? What happened?”
“We crashed.”
“… Is it because you’re so tired?”
She’d been asleep in the passenger seat when I swerved to miss the deer, so she hadn’t seen it. She’d only woken up long enough to scream and get knocked unconscious in the crash.
“No, I was awake. This was just bad luck.”
She grunted as I helped her out of her seat. She leaned awkwardly against me in the confined space.
“Hold on a sec,” I said as took the keys out of the ignition. “Okay, look at me.” I used the small flashlight on the keychain to examine her squinting eyes.
“Well, the good news is I don’t think you have a concussion.”
“And the bad news?”
“We still have about three-and-a-half miles until we’re out of danger. We have to keep moving or those things are gonna find us sooner rather than later.”
She nodded nervously. I could understand her fear, because I was afraid too. The only firepower I had left was a single stun grenade and an assault rifle with only one extra magazine. If we came across more than one Ravager, there was no guarantee I would be able to protect us.
I put the key back into the ignition and opened the moonroof so we could get out of the car without having to climb out the driver’s side window above us. Another bolt of lightning lit the sky and thunder clapped as we stepped out into the rain. Callie zipped up her jacket as the cold rain pelted her like a swarm of angry hornets. I did the same and looked around to make sure we were safe , then I used the rainwater on my hand to wipe the blood off her face.
Those things were like bears when it came to tracking the scent of blood and like sharks in how the scent would send them into a frenzy. It’d been two weeks now and I still felt like an asshole for asking this young girl if she was on or about to begin her period when my team had retrieved her. A woman her age shouldn’t have to be asked such personal questions, especially by a stranger, but it meant keeping her and the rest of the team alive so I’d been left with little choice. Her privacy meant far less than her life.
I reached into the sedan and grabbed the stun grenade and my rifle from where they were in the backseat. I slipped the shoulder strap over my head and put the grenade and extra magazine into my coat pockets. With a hand on her back I motioned us toward the broken city. We had crashed just two miles outside the city limits. I stole a final glance up at the storm that had blocked out the sun. Another thing that had gone wrong today. We’d been hoping to have the safety of daylight during the extraction, but God had other plans apparently.
We had been so close.
“Which building?” She huffed as she jogged beside me. The extra weight from our rain-soaked pants and waterlogged shoes had only slowed us down slightly and we got close to the desolate metropolis.
I pointed toward the city’s center. “The second-tallest one. It has a helicopter pad. Even if Ravagers start scaling the side of the building when they see the helicopter land, we should have plenty of time before they reach the top. We just need to get there,” I replied as we neared the first abandoned building. Of course I meant the second-tallest of the buildings that were still standing.
Most of the skyscrapers in the United States had been rated to withstand earthquakes with a magnitude upwards of 8.0 on the Richter scale. Unfortunately, that was tested two years ago. Not just here, but across the entire planet when fault lines on every continent shifted at the same time. Cities crumbled to the ground and millions died that day. Infrastructure collapsed and riots consumed the streets as people fought desperately to secure food and other resources to survive.
Then a month after the fissures opened, something emerged.
When we reached the first building at the edge of the city I signaled Callie to stop and come closer. I knelt down and lowered my voice. “I want you to stay by my side, okay? Never more than—”
“Three feet away. I know, Corbin.” She looked nervous but she still gave me sass.
“And keep your voice down. The rain is heavy enough to drown out a lot of sound, but not all of it…smartass.” I gave her a smile and shoved her shoulder lightly.
She nodded and shoved me back. They were the same age, but Callie was a lot shorter than my Juliet. Her dark curls stood in contrast to my daughter’s long blonde hair that nearly reached her waist. It was almost unnerving how much Callie reminded me of Juliet. They would probably become great friends after Juliet got better. Both girls had the same “kiss my ass” attitude that came with being fourteen. Though not the “defiant against everyone and constantly rolling their eyes” kind. They had the mindset that showed me they wouldn’t let this world devour them without a fight. They were strong.
We stayed tight to the side of the building as we walked beneath the deluge, moving as swiftly as I felt was safe. Any more quickly and our steps would have become too audible as our shoes slapped the pooling water on the cracked sidewalks.
We came to yet another intersection. Like the ones before it, I held a hand up to signal Callie to hold. I had the rifle at the ready, safety off. I peered around the corner. Abandoned cars and toppled buildings presented themselves to me, but no Ravagers. To the left was mostly the same, but something caught my eye. There was a large sink hole that stretched across most of the street a hundred yards down. A Ravager den. I waited about two minutes before I felt safe enough to wave her forward. We crouched low as we crossed the intersection, navigating the uneven and shattered pavement.
Within the first year of society collapsing, nature had begun to reclaim what humanity had stolen. Weeds and plants grew out of the streets and sidewalks everywhere. On many of the buildings we passed, vines had begun to snake up the outer walls, using the cracks to take purchase as they raced toward the sky.
We came to another intersection, and I did my safety check. When I looked left, a smile crossed my face, and I brought Callie in close. I pointed down the road and said, “See the fifth building down on the right? The grey-and-black one.”
“With the truck crashed into the lobby?”
“I’ll give you five dollars if you can guess what I used to do there.”
We started walking again. I spun in a quick circle to make sure I hadn’t missed anything sneaking up on us. From ground level or above.
“No one carries around money anymore, Corbin,” She said in a low voice.
“C’mon, five dollars. Yours when we get to the base.”
“…you used to work there.”
I looked at her and narrowed my eyes a little. “I meant specifically.”
“No, you left it open to a vague answer.” Her expression was all attitude, and it screamed “Where’s my money?”
I let out a sigh and grinned. “Fine. Five dollars when we get back, you little shit.”
“You better pay up, old man. Otherwise I’m gonna kick your a—”
A primal roar stopped her mid-sentence. I held up my left fist, dropped to a knee, and pointed my rifle straight ahead, focusing on the rainy intersection forty meters in front of us. Through the scope, I could clearly make out two figures in the rainy intersection. A bear was bellowing a challenge at the creature slowly circling it like a shark. I swallowed as I watched, my heartbeat speeding up. That poor bastard was about to die just because it was dumb enough to look for food in the city.
Callie grabbed my shoulder and her fingers dug in deep. Her voice shook as a single whispered word escaped from her lips. “Ravager.”
Jerry always joked that they looked like a jaguar had fucked a saltwater crocodile. Violently. He wasn’t wrong. It was several feet larger than the mammal it was circling, and its jaws seemed to be stuck in a demonic smile. Long obsidian claws dug into the pavement while a thick reptilian tail weaved back and forth in the rain as it took slow deliberate steps around its prey. The rain ran down its green-and-black body, dancing side to side to match the scalation patterns as it went. It wasn’t an Alpha, so the spikes on its back weren’t as long and its scales weren’t as dense as they were on its larger female counterpart, but that bear would still have trouble breaking through. The Ravager shook its body, throwing off droplets of rain, and I heard it let out a slow, deep chirping sound. Almost like it was laughing at the bear’s struggle.
Oh shit. It’s calling.
Small pieces of rock and glass fell to the ground only a few feet from me.
“Don’t. Move,” I whispered, praying that Callie had heard me.
I could feel her grip tighten and she began to tremble. Very slowly, I pulled my eye away from the scope just enough that I could turn my head and look up. I felt my heart nearly punch out of my chest. Two Ravagers were climbing along the side of the building, only four stories above us. Then a pack crawled out from the broken windows directly above us. Their glowing green eyes were all fixed on the bear.
In the dark their vision was incredible, but in daylight not so much. In gloom like this, we had a very good chance of not being seen if we held perfectly still. I let my eyes move to the other buildings, where at least two dozen more Ravagers emerged from the darkness within the darkness of the abandoned structures. They were all converging on the intersection.
We might be good, but that bear is fucked.
Callie squeezed my shoulder twice. I took my left hand off the barrel and raised a finger. It would happen any moment now. The Ravager lowered down, readying itself to lunge. It seemed to cackle as the bear stood on its hind legs and roared. An instant later, another Ravager leapt off a building and landed on its back, tackling it. The roar quickly became a scream as a dozen of those predators pounced and began ripping the bear apart. It would be dead in seconds. We didn’t have long.
I grabbed Callie’s arm, and we broke into a sprint. We headed back to the last alley and hooked a left. I felt her slip as she turned, but I pulled her up before she hit the ground, somehow maintaining my own balance on the slick pavement. We had to get some distance between us and the frenzy. Other Ravagers were sure to be heading toward the sound. If we were lucky, it might even clear away the ones that were by the building we had to—
A roar, louder than anything else we’d heard before, bellowed throughout the city, and all the Ravagers fell silent. We slid to a stop and I whipped back around bringing the rifle up, finger on the trigger and ready to fire. I watched the entrance we had come through, my body shaking as I waited for something besides the falling rain to move in front of my gun. Nothing was there and nothing was coming, but I knew that sound. I heard it in my nightmares constantly since that night two years ago.
“Corbin, what was that?” Callie asked nervously.
I didn’t answer. I glanced up the walls, and then back to the alley entrance. If it found us, we were dead. I couldn’t fight one of those things. The only other time I’d tried to, Georgina had—
“Corbin!” Callie hissed.
I inhaled sharply, and realized I had been holding my breath for who knows how long.
“Are you okay?”
She placed a hand on the back of my arm, and I looked down at the girl. She was clearly worried about me. Understandable since I hadn’t slept in twenty-nine hours and was the only one left of my team. I hadn’t let myself rest since the rest of the team had been killed. I couldn’t risk something sneaking up on us, like it did the other day.
We’d seen some horrific shit these last two weeks, but the fact that this girl was concerned about me meant I needed to get it together. She needed me right now. Here. Not spacing out. I had to keep it together.
“Yeah, yeah I’m good,” I whispered back, lowering the rifle. My hands were still shaking but that would stop soon enough.
“What was that?” Her eyes were desperate for an answer that may alleviate her fear, but the truth would only make her mounting fear worse.
“Hopefully nothing we need to deal with. Come on.” With a hand on her shoulder, I sent us back on our way. We only had fifty minutes left until we had to be on the roof.
The front windows of the lobby had all been shattered. Glass softly crunched and snapped under our shoes as we made our way into the dark building. It was nice to get out of the rain, but inside the lobby every sound seemed to echo far louder than it should have. It did nothing to help my anxiety, which had been almost crippling since the alley.
The only light that reached into the building came from outside, and there wasn’t much of it. Hopefully, the commotion earlier had drawn away any of the building’s current residents. I turned on the flashlight attached to the side of my gun, at the base of the barrel, and did a quick glance of the empty space. Reception desks covered in dust, leafless dead plants in planters, overturned chairs, and a few bloodstains on the floor. More or less what I had expected.
“What now?” Callie whispered.
I nearly leapt out of my shoes when she spoke suddenly. Another perfect example of why I keep my finger off the trigger until I’m ready to kill something.
“Now,” I whispered back, “we find the stairwell.”
I glanced down and saw her staring back at me with wide-eyes.
“Seriously? We have to take the stairs to the roof? This building is like forty stories tall!”
“Fifty-three, and there hasn’t been electricity in this city for almost two years. If you know how to turn the elevators on without it, then I’d be thrilled to go that route. Believe me, I’m not looking forward to this either.”
“This is bullshit,” she grumbled as we pressed on.
“How exactly did you think we were going to get to the roof of a skyscraper? Levitate using the power of friendship?” I asked, trying not to laugh at her.
“I don’t know, I just figured you’d come up with something that didn’t suck.”
“You aren’t the only one that hates this. But unlike me, you don’t have the knees of a forty-year-old, so stop complaining.” I could practically hear her eyes rolling.
“There’s the door, come on.”
We stood outside the entrance to the stairwell for several seconds preparing ourselves. I held a finger to my lips and gripped the door’s cold silver handle. As slowly and quietly as I could, I opened the door. A loud metallic shriek emanated from the long unused door, filling the space around us. I cringed.
“Seriously?” She said, shaking her head.
“Okay, that’s not my fa—”
I was cut short by the screams of Ravagers in the distance. The sounds floated through the open spaces where the windows had once been at the front of the building.
“Crap, go!” I hissed as she ran past me into the pitch-black stairwell. I followed behind, closing the traitorous door behind us. Callie had only gone a few steps because of the darkness, but now that my flashlight gave us some respite from the endless dark surrounding us, we quickly moved up the series of landings. I took comfort in knowing I’d heard no sounds from above, except our footsteps and breathing echoing all the way to the top.
When we reached the landing for the thirty-fifth floor, I broke the silence with a breathless, “Okay…fuck this. We’re taking…a break.”
In the low light I could see her enthusiastically nodding in agreement as she leaned against the wall and slid down to the ground. Even with a short break we’d still reach the roof with a few minutes to spare before our ride showed up.
Before long, my breathing started to slow and feel less labored. Callie massaged her legs while I stretched mine out. I was pretty sure that no matter what I did, walking was going to be a pain for the next few days.
“So, you used to live around here?” Callie asked after a few minutes.
“Hmm? Yeah, we had a house about five minutes outside the city.”
She seemed hesitant, but her eyes were locked onto mine.
“What was it like here? Back when the emergence happened?”
I closed my eyes and puffed out my cheeks with a slow exhale. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about or remember. In fact, I hadn’t talked about that night once since it happened. The doctor on the base had been badgering me for nearly two years to open up about it, saying it would “help with the healing process,” but I just shut down every time I tried.
Something felt different now. It wasn’t just that Callie reminded me of my daughter, although I’m sure on some level that was a part of it. We’d been through a lot as we traveled across three states these last two weeks. Pushing each other forward and fighting against impossible odds to survive had led to us forming an almost familial bond. I really did care about this kid. Maybe I’d actually be able to open up this time.
“Come on. I’ll tell you while we walk.”
I extended a hand and helped her up.
“You didn’t have a fissure open near your town, did you Callie?”
She shook her head and we started walking again.
“Leading up to it, big cities like this were practically war zones. The entire world was basically under martial law because of the riots. The military was doing their best to keep the peace in the cities, but it wasn’t enough. Even former soldiers like me stepped up to help out. Local law enforcement usually kept things in check at the shelters and camps. My wife was a sheriff, so she helped oversee things at the shelter we were staying at.”
“So you weren’t still in the army?”
I shook my head. “I served two enlistments as an Army Ranger. I thought about a third, but I wanted to be here to see my daughter grow up…” Would she even get to grow up now? I wondered. Or would the virus those demons brought with them claim her life before we could get a cure from Callie’s blood?
An image of Juliet lying in the hospital bed came to me then. She looked so frail and weak. Like even the breeze would make her shatter. The cruelest thing about these creatures wasn’t the violence and bloodshed—it was the disease they brought with them. It used adults as vectors to help it spread, but it only affected children. The oldest recorded victim was nineteen and the youngest was only days old. Once the symptoms started there was no stopping it. Only slowing it. When Jerry spoke to me yesterday, he’d said that Juliet’s organs were failing. We only had a day or two left to save my daughter. I shook my head to climb out of the hole my mind was falling into.
“So I retired from active service and ended up getting a job here in the city as the Head of Security at that building we saw earlier. It was a mind-numbingly boring job, but the pay was decent,” I said with a soft laugh. “Anyway, we didn’t know the Ravagers were working their way up from below. We just knew that all these fissures and sinkholes had opened around the city and surrounding suburbs. I was on patrol the night they showed up. It was the end of our shift, and my partner Vasquez and I were returning to the civic arts plaza, which had been converted into a shelter after our homes were destroyed by the quake. We were about half a mile away when we saw smoke rising from that direction, then gunshots rang out. We ran toward our families, thinking a riot had broken out or something, but then people started running past us, trying to get away from the shelter. They were yelling about monsters. As the building came into view, we saw probably a dozen Ravagers tearing through the lines of soldiers and the police officers that were trying to protect the people fleeing. In the middle of all that carnage, standing above all the other Ravagers, was an Alpha.”
Callie stopped walking. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah…I am.” I stopped and turned back, pointing the flashlight to the wall beside her to cast a soft glow on her nervous face.
“S-so, what happened?”
I was glad she couldn’t see the grim expression I was sure I had on my face.
“We didn’t have enough soldiers or weapons strong enough to pierce the Alpha’s scales. Vasquez…died trying to save his family. I barely got Juliet out of there.”
“What about your wife?”
I let out a deep breath and swallowed as I picked my words, choosing the ones that would leave me with the shallowest cuts.
“She’s why Juliet and I got out alive.”
“Did she—”
“She took the Alpha’s eye, before it took her.”
I shifted around on the steps a bit. I could feel the tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. “I wanted to go after it. I wanted to—” My bottom lip started to tremble as my voice cracked. My breath became unsteady as I struggled to find the words. “She told me to take Juliet a-and run. My daughter saw her mom die and still blames me for her death. She hasn’t spoken to me in almost two years. I lost both of them that day.” The tears wouldn’t stop as I lowered the gun and brought a hand to my face and sobbed.
I never should have answered Callie’s question. The wound in my heart that had scarred over was now ripped open, fresh and raw as I recalled the sight of my wife being torn from this world. Juliet screaming as I threw her over my shoulder and ran as fast as my legs could carry us. But here I was, a grown man, sobbing in front of the girl I was supposed to be protecting. What was wrong with me? I had to pull it together, I had to—
Callie’s arms wrapped around me and she whispered, “It’s okay…it’s okay,” as she cried too.
We got to the access door that led to the roof with less than two minutes left. Even over the sound of the heavy rain outside the door I could hear the helicopter approaching. At first I’d mistaken the rapid-fire beat of the rotor blades in the distance for the sound of my heart after tackling these stairs, but that misconception only lasted for a fleeting second. Somehow my heart beat even faster knowing that if I could hear the helicopter, then every Ravager in the city did too. And they were likely chasing the sound.
“Never leave my side,” I said to Callie, as I pushed the door’s panic bar and gently pressed the door open against the wind. The rain had intensified to an alarming degree since we’d entered the building, now coming down in thick sheets that the wind was sending straight into us with each gust. As we stepped out from the roof’s access shed, I didn’t see the open space I had expected. I saw Hell.
On the opposite end of the roof was a raised helicopter platform, right where I had expected it to be. The lights lining its perimeter were just as dead as the rest of the city, but that wasn’t what made the floor drop out from under me. Between us and the platform was a nightmare. Thousands of human and animal bones littered the entirety of the roof, leaving almost no clear path to our goal. On top of some piles I could see partial corpses and decaying flesh clinging to things that had been alive until very recently. Even with the wind and rain, the stench of feces and rot was almost too much to bear.
Callie put a hand to her face in a futile effort to fend off the smell. “Corbin, what—”
“It’s a nest.” I shook my head as I tried to make sense of the horrors in front of us. I had been on dozens of nest raids, but this was unlike anything I’d ever seen. More than that, it wasn’t even below ground or hidden from the sun.
What the hell is happening?
I the space around us and thankfully the roof’s occupant wasn’t home. The UH-60 Black Hawk was only a few hundred feet away from the building now, which meant hundreds of Ravagers were about to start climbing, if they hadn’t already. We needed to run.
“Come on, move it!” I shouted as we dodged around the stomach-high mounds of death that surrounded us. Before long we hit a wall of bones and decaying tissue. We scurried over as fast as we could, careful not to cut ourselves on any jagged ends. The scent of blood would be a beacon to any Ravager near us, letting them know that a warm meal was close by.
I got to the other side first as the helicopter touched down, and then helped Callie down to my side of the pile. The door to the helicopter opened and the Airman standing there waved his arm in a panicked motion. He was pointing to my right, and mouthed one word: “Alpha.”
I turned just in time to see a giant black claw, six feet across, reach up and over the parapet at the edge of the roof. The ground beneath us shook violently, and bones fell loose from their piles, as the claw slammed down. A second arm reached over and crashed down onto the roof as the massive beast pulled itself up, it’s colossal head finally breaching the edge. The Alpha looked straight at the helicopter as it roared a challenge so loud that I could feel the world itself shake in fear.
I quickly gauged the distance between us and the helicopter, then its distance to the Alpha. We’d never make it. My mind was racing. Grasping at any thread of hope, but losing my grip each time I came up with any sort of plan.
Three of its four limbs were on the roof now. I stared at the mouth full of foot-long fangs that bit at the air. Its eyes glowed a piercing jade green that seemed to burn in their sockets. Then, for a drawn-out moment, time seemed to stop. Even the rain seemed to hang in place. I should have been terrified of the monster that was almost five times bigger than the other Ravagers. But, I wasn’t. Rage was supplanting that rational fear at an alarming rate. Because when it threw its head side to side challenging the helicopter that had invaded its nest, I noticed that this Alpha only had one eye that glowed.
The other had been shot out by my wife two years ago.
This was the same monster that cleaved away half my soul and tore my family apart. It killed my wife and if it got to that helicopter, then my daughter would die too. I knew how this had to end. There was only one way to get Callie and the cure out of here.
“Callie.”
She kept staring in horror at the Alpha without acknowledging me.
“Callie!” I grabbed her and she finally looked at me.
“When you get to the base, find my brother Jerry. And tell Juliet I’m sorry. Now run.”
She shook her head in confusion, “What—”
“Run!!!” I shoved her toward the helicopter and I ran in the opposite direction.
The Alpha quickly worked its way to the front of the Black Hawk, keeping itself away from the minigun that was mounted inside the cabin door. I turned back to face the beast, raised my rifle, and pulled the trigger. The bullets hit the Alpha along its rib cage, creating small sparks as the bullets bounced off it’s almost metallic scales. It didn’t even acknowledge my effort as it continued toward the helicopter. I knew that a gun this small couldn’t hurt the Alpha, save for a lucky shot to its eye, but I needed to draw its attention to me.
The airman closed the door and the rotors slowly sped up. They were leaving without Callie, prioritizing their own lives.
“No!” I shouted as I pulled a knife from my pants pocket and flipped it open. In one quick motion I sliced open my left palm and threw my hand into the air. I stood there waiting as warm blood flowed down my wrist, mixing with the frigid rain. My breathing was deep and as I waited, I prayed. Then, as if it heard my prayer, the Alpha stopped and turned toward me. It’s nostrils flared and what could almost be called a smile formed on its face.
It turned from the helicopter and began to move toward me. A loud crunch erupted when its massive claw stomped down on a short stack of bones, crushing all of them as it took its first step in my direction. Only fifteen feet away from it, Callie was crouched behind a pile of skeletal remains and bits of rotten meat. I could see her looking right at me. The conflict and fear on her face was evident. She knew she was leaving me here to die, and she wasn’t the kind of person to just go and do that. Even at her age she was a better person than half the adults I knew.
The Alpha stopped and smelled the air. Then it tilted its head toward Callie.
Not happening!
I took aim and pulled the trigger again. A small barrage of sparks lit up the Alpha’s forehead and it snapped its attention back to me. After it took two more steps I waved my hand, motioning Callie to go. Then I fired again, keeping its focus on me as she ran the remaining distance to the helicopter, which had once again opened its doors.
I kept backing up towards the edge of the roof as I saw the helicopter taking off. Callie was screaming something at the airman, though I had no way to tell what. Again, I pulled the trigger. I could have gone for the roof access door, but I had made my choice. I was either going to avenge my wife or join her. This ended no other way.
As the helicopter rose, now hovering about thirty feet above the roof, a distinct mechanical humming ramped up. The Blackhawk pivoted and I saw the airman take aim with the minigun. My bloody left hand released the rifle’s handguard and a fist shot into the air as I screamed, “Light it up!”
The gun roared to life and the Alpha’s head arched to the sky as it cried out in fury and pain. All around it, bones shattered and bits of concrete, dust, and green blood sprayed into the air as thousands of bullets slammed into the Alpha’s armor. Only a fraction of the bullets that hit were actually pierce its hide, but its screams were the most beautiful sounds I had heard in years.
The monster lunged to the side, moving faster than anything that big had a right to. It looked back to face the helicopter and brought its tail down and to the side.
Oh no…
It lashed its tail into a pile of bones, sending dozens of shattered white spears straight at the helicopter. Callie dropped to her stomach just in time as the barrage assaulted the Black Hawk, one of which went straight through the airman’s chest, pinning him to the far wall inside the cabin. All along the helicopters body and canopy, projectiles had managed to pierce through. It might have been okay, except one had struck the base of the main rotor. The helicopter wobbled violently as a horrifying grinding sound erupted from the base of the rotor along with a thick plume of smoke. I couldn’t hear Callie’s screams, but I saw the terror on her face as she desperately held onto a seatbelt strap.
“Callie!!!” I screamed as the Black Hawk tipped sideways and fell out of sight to the world below. I lowered my rifle and swayed in place. I couldn’t even breathe, though my mouth hung open. It wasn’t just the knowledge that without Callie my daughter was going to die. It was that I’d just lost another person I cared about. Who I’d had promised to protect and take care of her once this was all over. I had let my wife down, my daughter, and now this poor kid. I couldn’t protect anyone.
As quickly as the despair had arrived and attempted to drown me, it evaporated just as fast. Replaced by something far purer. A snarl formed on my face and I loosed a primal scream at the Alpha as my tears mixed with the rain. I brought my rifle up and unloaded the rest of my clip, aiming at the holes the minigun had made in its nearly impenetrable shell. The creature screamed in pain as my shots hit their marks, spurting green blood into the air. I ejected the spent magazine, slammed the new mag in, and hit the bolt release. The clicking sound it made as the bolt slid forward was like a starter pistol. The instant the sound reached my ears my finger pulled the trigger. The only thing louder than my screaming was the sound of the shots tearing into the enemy before me. The enemy that was running full speed at me now.
I pulled the trigger again, but no more shots came out. I threw the gun aside and glanced over my shoulder as I reached into my coat. The edge of the roof was three feet behind me and the Alpha would be on me in seconds. I held the stun grenade in front of me and pulled the pin.
“Hope you can fly, asshole!” I tossed the grenade into the air and dove to the side. I landed hard on the roof and slid across the smooth wet concrete. I closed my eyes and covered my ears as a blinding flash penetrated my eyelids, accompanied by a piercing bang that left a ringing in my ears. I opened my eyes and through blurry vision I saw the Alpha make a futile attempt to stop its forward momentum on the slick roof. It crashed over the parapet and went screaming over the edge.
Breathing heavily, and blinking my world back into focus, I wiped the rain from my face and inched over to the shattered parapet. The giant corpse splayed out on the pavement below in a slowly spreading pool of green blood. At first relief flooded me, then terror took over as I saw the hundreds of Ravagers climbing up the side of the building. The closest ones were almost at the roof.
I took a few steps back toward the roof access shed in hopes of getting out of here alive but stopped when I saw something. A thin trail of smoke was in the air. It was coming from a helicopter flying in the distance. I started to smile, but a claw reached onto the parapet and cut that short.
I ran toward the open door, only forty feet away now. Ravagers had climbed over the edge and were scattered all over the roof, running yelling in delight as they chased down their prey. They were too big to follow me through the door. I just had to make it there in time.
It was going to be close.
Thirty feet. The ground beneath me shook as dozens of large, scaled predators sprinted at me.
Twenty feet. I could hear the cracking of the concrete as their claws dug in. Ten feet. The pitch-black stairwell was directly ahead of me. It was right there. Six feet. One was so close I was sure I could feel it’s breath. I took one more step, praying to God I’d make it. As I dropped and began to slide toward a chance of safety, I saw a claw swinging down.
My eyes opened, only a crack at first. The light hit them like daggers and I winced, closing them again. I tried turning my head and lifting my arms, but they felt so weak. I could barely get them off the sheets before they fell back down. My eyes finally did open, straining against the fluorescent light that was buzzing above me. This wasn’t my bedroom.
I tried to say “Hello?”, but it came out as nothing more than a croak. My throat burned and ached. My eyes were starting to adjust as my head listed to the side. Tubes connected my arm to several fluid bags on a pole beside the bed. I started to panic when I saw how skinny my arm had become. It couldn’t be mine. It looked like it belonged to a skeleton and had a translucent skin wrapping over it. My fingers were nothing more than frail sticks.
In a chair only a few feet away sat a girl. She brushed her curly brown hair out of her face as she yawned. Her eyes were still closed as she reached up to stretch, and a thin white blanket fell from her shoulders. The girl’s arms were covered in small bruises, like a heroin addict’s might be.
I tried to speak again, but only another croak and a partial word came out. She must have heard it because she froze and her eyes opened. They locked onto mine.
“Oh my God,” she said as she bolted for the door. It took an immense effort but I was able to turn my head as the girl stuck half body out the door and was yelling at someone. All I was able to catch was “—get Jerry!”
The girl knelt beside the hospital bed, resting her arms on the thick plastic side rail and smiling weakly.
“Hi,” she said giving me a half wave.
I tried clearing my throat and gave a barely audible and raspy “Hi” in response.
We were the only two in here, but I could hear people running in the hall outside, and getting closer.
“I’m really glad you woke up.” Her lips formed a weak smile and started to tremble. Her eyes shimmered with tears that were ready to fall.
I looked at her, confused by everything that was happening. I was starting to feel really scared. Not by the girl, but something was very wrong. I tried once more to talk. I asked about the one thing that would make me feel better.
“Where’s my dad?”
And with those words, the tears fell from her eyes.