Southeast

It’s gone, I think.

I can no longer hear the clicking sound it makes. Others like it chitter and call to others of their horrid kind. I have been hiding in the collapsed marquee of a theatre (Waiting for Godot was showing here in the before times, the lettering reads) waiting for the thing to move on.

How long has it been now? Weeks? I’m not sure anymore. With no job to go to, no family events, no anything, it’s so easy to lose track of the days. Calendars and watches, useless.  It’s starting to get colder, and it feels like October now. The sky seems ready to snow. I cast a dubious glance upwards at a flat, burning white that is hard to look at for long. The harsh light and the cold hurt my eyes.

I pick my way out of the rubble, trying to be quiet. They hear well and I do not want to bring them down on me again. Somewhere far off, I hear the thunder of one of the giant ones moving. I can feel their footfalls in my chest. The street seems deserted, so I quickly dart to the rubble on the other side of the street. One of the giants has been through here, dragging its hideous bulk down the street, scraping the facades off the buildings as it passed. I wonder how long it has been like this.

It looks like the end of the world, I think as I climb the rubble to the second floor of the building. I enter an apartment torn in half, someone’s former home. A stopped clock sits on the wall, tilted crazily to one side and the hands stopped at six eighteen. I pick my way along through the apartment, stepping over sleeping bags stretched across the floor of the former living room. A camping lantern is overturned next to them as if the owners left in a hurry.

It all happened so fast in the beginning that no one knew what they were. One moment, life hummed along at what we all thought of as normal and then it did not. Suddenly the horrors came. I remember seeing news footage of one of the big ones, one of the first, clambering out of a sucked-in hole in the ground. Cameras mounted on helicopters filmed it. It was huge, black, and mostly made of shadow, it seemed. But it was firm and solid and laid waste to its surroundings quickly. The helicopter pulled back and filmed some of the smaller things crawling up out of the hole behind the big one. Hundreds of them, the television reporter moaned.

It's so hard to tell what the giants look like but mostly I think of mammoths. They seem to be shaggy and a wash of noxious mist cascades off them as they move, creating a swirl that obscures their true form. Enormous mammoths in a cloud of their own poison shadow move across the countryside, huge blade-like tusks slashing the ground ahead. The smaller ones are like scorpions the size of sofas, yet somehow even more terrifying.

The news said they were in the cities, so I took Rosa and Chris and left Brownsville. The roads were clogged beyond use and we struck out on foot. Chris, being ever prepared, insisted on bringing a suitcase full of stuff, the kind on wheels, and it is probably still in the back lot of the Nissan dealership out on Ring Road, less than a mile from the car we left behind. We didn’t see many of them up close for a while until we returned to the road, crossing the four-lane 293 highway. The cars were just as thick there, bumper to bumper and we had to climb over the cars.

In the gap between lanes, strewn with left-behind detritus, came crawling one of the smaller ones. It was a hundred feet or so away and we froze. It scuttled along in our direction, the antennae on its head dowsing along, those awful clicking sounds. Rosa and I climbed through the open doors of an SUV, its back seat horribly littered with baby-sized children’s toys, Cheerios mashed into the upholstery and floor mats. Chris followed but the thing saw him. It screeched and the clatter of its feet and that awful dragging sound they make picked up. It dashed at him, irrationally fast.

I pulled Rosa clear of the SUV and screamed at Chris to hurry, but he was too slow. The thing rose up shrieking, all flashing claws and teeth and spines, and tore into him. We made for the trees as fast as we could, both crying hysterically, running half-blind through the highwayside foliage, splashing through mud puddles hidden in the long grass. We looked back once we were at the edge of the woods. Chris was gone. The thing, the crawling, scuttling monstrosity, could be seen as a black shape under the carriage of the SUV, sniffing at Chris’ destroyed body, clicking. It reached under the vehicle with one of the black claws, those horrible razor-sharp appendages, and flipped it over like it was made of rags and steam instead of metal.

I crouch in the apartment now, shattered window glass crunching under my feet, and listen. There is faint chittering but none of the things in sight. In the kitchen there is nothing to take, cupboards emptied and the fridge barren, at room temperature. The door to the hallway is canted to the side now and doesn’t open easily, but I worm through and make my way down the dark hall, listening. Nothing close by. Those horrible seismic footsteps vibrating from somewhere far away. Not far enough.

This tiny town on the river, Merton’s Landing, has been laid to waste by these walking, crawling horrors, unimaginably vicious and terrifying.

I lost Rosa somewhere outside of Carverville. We had found a small group of people comically armed with shotguns and axes. One carried a pitchfork. Carverville is a small place mostly made up of a loose ring of farms stretching for acres around a single street of small businesses and a post office, and the people were doing the best they could to survive, I suppose. But the haunted looks in their eyes said they knew the weapons they clutched would not help in the end.

They welcomed us as much as possible, but they had little to share. They had a couple of deer and a wildcat they’d hunted and had a fire in the barn where they cooked. Haven’t seen any animals in a while, one of them told me. None we could eat. There was a well for fresh water and five bedrooms in the farmhouse where they were holed up. There were about twenty of them plus Rosa and I. Whosever farm it had been were gone.

They came at night to the farm. Rosa and I were asleep on the floor of one of the bedrooms with three of someone’s children in the bed. The screams woke us, and we heard the clicking and the chittering of the crawling things. I scrambled to the window and pulled the curtain aside to see bodies on the ground and one of the monsters tearing the heavy barn door off its hinges as if it were weightless. There were two or three shotgun blasts and by then, we had the children out of bed and moving down the stairs. I led the way with Rosa bringing up the rear as we left the farmhouse. One more shotgun blast and then it was silent other than the clicking and the dragging sounds they make. No human sounds. I think the last shotgun blast was a suicide, but I can’t prove it.

Quickly, two of the things scurried back out of the barn. We were caught in the middle of the dooryard between the house and barn, and we grabbed the children and ran. I scooped up the smallest of them, a girl about four years old, while Rosa herded the others, two boys, in front of her. There was a shriek as one of the things sighted us. We ran blindly in the dark, hearing them behind. There was a rut of a laneway leading from the farm to the road and I tried to feel my way along it, headlong in the dark.

Behind, I heard one of the kids stumble and fall. Get up, I heard Rosa scream, and the struggling sounds of her trying to pull the boy up. I turned, trying not to stop running, the little girl screaming in my ear and beating at my neck with tiny fists. I could barely see but the light dimly reflected off of the scurrying things gaining on the dark shapes of Rosa and the boy. She picked him up, but he was too heavy to run with.

I almost fell and turned back forward. I ran, carrying the terrified girl, feeling the other boy close by. When we reached the end of the laneway where the blacktop crossed by, I stopped with a tearing stitch in my side. Rosa and the other boy were nowhere to be seen. Panting heavily, I scanned the area, straining my eyes in the country dark. Nothing. I thought in the distance I saw one of the things heading back towards the farmhouse in the dim firelight from the open barn, but the other one, as well as Rosa and the boy, were not to be seen.

I told myself they’d made it into the woods. I told myself they were safe. I hadn’t heard them scream, I hadn’t seen one of those crawling horrors take them. They’re fine, in the woods, I reasoned. I took the boy and the girl- Robbie and Elsie, they told me- to a skeletal tree across the road where we climbed and waited for daylight. Robbie didn’t know what had happened. I finally managed to get Elsie to stop crying with promises that we would go back and find the others.

We looked once it was light,  but we couldn’t find Rosa or the other boy, Joey. They must have gone through the woods, I rationalized. I found seven of the people from the little collective dead in the barn, torn to shreds. I made the kids wait outside, away from the dead in the yard, while I searched. I didn’t want them to see.

Back into the street now. Clicking to the left so I go right. I pick my way carefully along, the pack on my back lighter and lighter as my food supply dwindles. I turn a corner onto Water Street, according to the street sign laying across the road. I step over it and in the failing light I see one of the black things moving along the street ahead, facing away from me. I freeze.

They are awful- eight to ten feet long and black as a nightmare. Armored like hell’s lobsters, with gnashing claws, and always, always those clicking sounds. I wonder if it’s how they see, like bats. Echolocation. I have never seen eyes, just the dowsing antennae, but somehow, they always know when prey is near.

The thing pokes at a tipped cart with flattened fruit, gone to rot, hesitantly tapping it with one of its razor claws. It moves on. I stand, rooted to the spot, watching in terror. I feel my heartbeat in my throat and ears. I dash into an open door, what had been a record store. Shelves and bins of vinyl records line the store as I pass through, trying to be as quiet as possible. The back room of the store has a bar fridge that’s still closed, although the power is long off. I take two bottles of water and a package of lukewarm bologna, stuffing them into my pack. I stick my head out the back door of the record store and look around. The thing is gone, but I know it cannot be far.

I move. It is easier in daylight, although they are out at all hours. Farther down Water Street I see the blue shimmer of the Chesnutt River. The chittering comes and goes but I make for the water and soon find myself standing on the boards of a dock. There are slips with boats in them, mostly empty. One cabin cruiser is sunk in its slip, its nose sticking crazily up out the shallow water, nearly vertical. There is a hole punched in the fiberglass boat and blood spattered on the dock. A tear of fabric, some sort of plaid print, hangs off of one of the jagged edges of the hole that sunk the cruiser.

One boat still floats, thudding gently against the half-tires that provide bumpers at the edge of the dock. Carefully I climb in, feeling it rocks in the water under my weight. There is nothing of value. Nothing to take, no supplies, no keys for the engine. Suddenly the boat begins to rock again although I am not moving. I look down the river.

The waves that rock the boat come from one of the big ones. It is pushing through the water that I know is over fifty feet deep, shoving the waves ahead of it. The boat bumps against the tires and I flatten myself on its bottom, willing the thing to pass by. My heart pounds and I feel weak as if it will explode in my chest. I hold my breath, hoping it has not seen me.

As it passes by the docks I stick my head up slightly, just enough to see the giant. Most of its head sticks out of the water, islands of its long back trailing behind in a whirl of that horrid fog, the black mist it walks in. The tusks this close are as long as city buses, slashing back and forth spraying water. It passes fifty feet away, but I am soaked by the water it whips around. I see its eyes glowing a brilliant green in the deep pits of its eye sockets, like emeralds in the depths of a mine. I also see it is shaggy like a mammoth but is covered in moving things inside the mist, some kind of horrid, whipping tentacles.

I see the fog spreading out behind it, like the wake of a ship, and as soon as its eyes are past, I scramble out of the boat and dash up the dock. None of the smaller monsters are in sight. Glancing back, I see the boat rocking and the half-sunken cruiser bobbing in its slip, and in the wake behind the giant thing, hundreds of white bellies of dead fish. Tendrils of the black mist follow me, and I run to a nearby building that looks intact. It is an office selling fishing licenses and parking for boaters. The glass of the door is unbroken, and I close it behind me, seeing the wash of the mist against it, shifting and moving like something living.

The glass itself seems to want to escape the touch of the fog, and it seems to move slightly on its own. The curls and wisps of it dissolve and fall to the ground, leaving strange dark patterns on the sidewalk just outside. It seems to move, undulating, on the ground in awful, unnatural gyrations. I shudder and turn away from the door. There is nothing of any use in the office, although they do sell some equipment and I linger momentarily over a rack of fillet knives knocked to the floor.

At the farm outside Carverville, I had put the two kids in the house and told them to stay there. I gave them bowls of dry cereal, telling them they needed to eat, and I went into the woods looking for Rosa. It was hard to tell where she had been, as there were no landmarks in the pitch black. I could see scratches and gouges in the ruts of the driveway from the thing that followed her, but they were harder to see in the long grass.

I tried to find any sign, broken branches, tracks of the familiar hiking boots she wore. Any indication that she had been by. The floor of the woods was loosely covered in washed-out grey leaves, twigs and hand-sized rocks, and I could not pick out a trail. Everything looked equally beaten down. The heavy white sky shone mercilessly overhead, and the morning shadows were still long as I searched.

I wandered the woods for over an hour, hissing quiet calls, listening for any sound. I dreaded the clicking and the chittering that the monsters made, but it was silent. There weren’t even birds that I could hear, no rattling of squirrels on the carpet of dry leaves, no far-off barking of dogs on the surrounding farms.

I left a note for Rosa after I gave up. I had no idea if she’d ever read it, but I left it duct-taped to the front door of the farmhouse where we’d spent our last night together.

Rosa, it read, moving on. Heading southeast. I have the other two kids with me, and we will meet up with you soon. I hope.

The kids hadn’t eaten their cereal and looked at me miserably. Their parents had been in the barn when the things came. Rosa and Joey aren’t here, I told them, we have to go and try to find them. I didn’t know if there was any point, but to keep the kids happy, I told them we would look for any others. We left the farmhouse, having wrapped as much cooked meat as we could fit in my pack, and made our way back to the paved road at the end of the laneway.

Behind the boating office is another space used for parking like behind the record store. There are no cars. I pass through, heading back parallel to Water Street. The water is unusable now with the flotilla of dead fish killed by the passing giant thing. I listen, always listen, for the sinister clicking. I haven’t seen another person in days now and I wonder how many are dead.

Merton’s Landing basically exists for the river and I’ve only been here once, on a pleasure boating day with friends years ago. The place is normally a ghost town in winter save for ice fishermen, and now in the fall of the year it is deserted and half destroyed. As I walk, I wonder if the ruin in the town was caused by the same creature I saw in the river, and if I’ve seen that same one elsewhere.

I do not see any more of the smaller ones, although I hear several. I hear their monstrous clicking and once, a shriek as if one had found prey. I hear the tumble of debris, loose bricks, looted things under their scuttling clawed feet as they move, but they do not find me. I make it back to the highway, really just a two-lane road with a number instead of a name and continue heading southeast. Once, a few miles outside of town, I see one of the giants walking along over the trees. I feel its steps before I see it. It towers over the row of pines that likely once separated neighbors’ properties, and steps through them, knocking several of the sturdy trees flat in its path. I crouch in the ditch beside the road, and it does not see me, continuing undisturbed on its way.

The sun is setting in a dimming haze. Even the sunsets have lost their color. I see a house off the side of the road and decide to make for it. I have a white t-shirt tied around one of the straps of my pack and I pull it loose, waving it in a gesture that I hope signals I am not threatening. I see my reflection in the panes of glass in the door as I approach and notice that the door is slightly ajar. Freshly fallen leaves, grey instead of autumn sunbursts, swirl around the door and some blow inside. I follow them inside to find the house empty.

The kitchen has been cleaned out. No food. I still have some cooked meat in my pack, but I don’t know how much longer it will be edible. There is a butcher’s block on the counter, and I take the biggest knife there, although the largest is missing. I start to search the house, calling out quietly that I mean no harm. My voice returns to me, hollower than it left.

There are pictures on the walls of unfamiliar faces. I see myself reflected in the black void of a television screen and wonder who else has seen themselves there and move upstairs. Three bedrooms, one a spare room, a teenager’s pink and black color scheme and the master bedroom done in what looks like young pine. I decide I will spend the night in the spare room as the others are too lived-in for comfort. Even after everything it seems wrong to be doing this, but I doubt I would survive many nights outside.

I check to ensure the windows and doors are all locked. The sun is low behind the trees, and the house is darkening quickly. I feel the vibrations of a giant, far off, and go to the basement. In the darkness and cold of the basement I find a flashlight, the kind that is a cap to a large battery. The homeowners must have forgotten it in the basement when they fled.

I go to the upper level and set my pack on the bed. The last strains of grey sunlight drifts through the window and I gingerly slide the screen up, allowing fresh air and sound in. I take the pack off, keeping it and my newly found flashlight on the floor beside the bed, the knife on the nightstand.

Dinner is a piece of gamey meat. One of the bucks they’d hunted, I think, by the taste. Glancing out the window at the falling night, I think just how peaceful it is here. I can hear the tumble of the Chesnutt River close by, but still no birds or animals. Nature has gone silent.

Robbie and Elsie complained frequently that their legs were sore, they were tired and wanted to stop. I tried to tell them we had to keep moving. Monsters everywhere, I reminded them. I taught them what to listen for, how to tell where the giants were and how close the clicks could get before the smaller ones would find us. We made good time, but it would have been much faster alone. I can’t leave them behind, though.

I tried to keep them quiet, instead of yelling for Rosa or Joey. I tell them they can talk, but no yelling. I repeated that we were going southeast but they didn’t really know what that meant. That way, I pointed at the horizon. They looked uncertainly, not sure what is there other than countryside and a few buildings dotted along our line of sight. Elsie cried, I don’t want to go that way! and sat down in the middle of the road.

She wanted her mother, Robbie told me. He’s her cousin and nine years old, Joey his older brother at twelve. Patiently, he sat on the road next to her, straddling the yellow line. She’s not here, Elsie, he said. He took her hand. We have to keep going. Duncan will help us find her. It had been days since I’d heard my own name, and it sounded strange to me.

Elsie reluctantly stood, her face red and bunched into a scowl. She was clearly upset but she followed me, walking stiff-legged next to Robbie. When the road bent northward we cut through a field, and I hoisted the little girl up over a wire fence. After a while walking through the field, she started to loosen up and even picked a small bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace. I kept an ear out and an eye on the sky as the hard white started to shade to grey and I knew that darkness would soon follow.

We found a little clapboard outbuilding, a farm shed, but there was nothing else in sight. It was dry and safer than outside. I shut the door behind us and wrapped the chilly Elsie in my jacket. Both she and Robbie are asleep quickly after a few bites of meat, and I am not far behind.

I woke hours later in full dark. Robbie was tugging at me insistently. What? I asked, fuzzy from sleep. Ssh! he hissed, and I stilled myself and listened. Clicking. Very close. Elsie was still asleep; I saw once my eyes adjusted to the dark. There was one four pane window in the shed, and the dim light barely showed her sleeping form. Silently, I reached for her and slipped my hand over her mouth.  She woke like I did, hazy and confused, and I told her to be very, very quiet. I could feel her working to scream and Robbie and I both frantically shushed her.

The clicking sounds were right outside the shed door. I froze, feeling Robbie’s arms tight around my leg and Elsie’s chest working. She was crying and my hand was wet with her tears, but she was quiet. We listened.

There was a scraping sound at the ancient boards that made up the shed. It was poking at the wood, exploring, looking for a way in. I glanced up at the window, hoping for the comfort of the moon or familiar stars, but I saw the thing’s tail bobbing back and forth like a trained cobra. I shuddered.

Seconds later, the glass shattered, a storm of shards raining down. I felt a slice open on my cheek, and finally, Elsie screamed. The tail thrashed around in the window frame, the other panes burst as the last foot or so of the tail whipped wildly around, searching for us.

Run! I yelled, praying that the window frame would hold the tail and maybe buy us time to escape. I scooped Elsie up, her rigid body thrashing, and kicked the door open as hard as I can. It hit the thing, and the clicking sped up into overdrive, and the shrieking was so loud! I’d never been so close to one of them at that point, and it was worse than I could ever have imagined! I burst out the door with Elsie over my shoulder, Robbie right behind.

Horribly, I heard his scream next. I turned as I ran, and he’d fallen. No! The tail of the thing was indeed stuck in the window frame, and it blasted the door back closed with a whip of one of its black claws! The raw power was horrifying to see, and my heart seized in my chest. The heavy door slammed shut on Robbie’s leg and splintered- I heard the crack of bone, and he screamed again in agony and terror! I could barely think, I was so frightened, and I tried to shield Elsie from the worst of it. In the dim moonlight I didn’t see much- thankfully- but the larger shadow of the monster absorbed the smaller shadow on the ground. I tasted iron on the air as it tore into the boy, and I grabbed Elsie tighter and bolted. The screams behind us didn’t last long.

It is pitch black again, just the faintest moonlight, and it takes me a moment to remember I’m in someone’s spare room, newly awake next to my pack and flashlight. I wonder for a moment why I’m awake and listen. No clicking. I sigh in relief but keep listening. From downstairs, there is a groaning creak. A floorboard, I realize. Someone or something is in the house.

Slowly, I grasp the knife off the nightstand. Another creak from the main level. The sounds of careful movement downstairs float to me. Painfully slowly, I crawl to the top of the stairs, looking down. Suddenly, from the kitchen, I see someone step out and look up the stairs. I flatten myself against the floor, silently praying I have not been seen.

Soft footfalls start to rise up the stairs. Caught, I think wildly, I’m caught! My mind races in panic as the person approaches. I clutch the kitchen knife tighter and peek, seeing a truck-stop ballcap rising up hesitantly. Knowing I’m caught, I quietly call out, hello?

Suddenly there is an explosion and a shattering pain in my left hand. I hiss in pain and whip my hand away, feeling a throb of blood. The knife clatters to the floor and I grasp my hand,  burning in pain.

Who is that? I hear, a full volume voice. Who’s there?

Help, I say weakly, my left hand slippery with blood. I hear a rattle, and a flashlight beam shines in my face.

Jesus, the voice says. The flashlight is set aside, and I can see blood pouring down my arm. The man comes to me and grips my hand, sending shocks of pain up my arm. It’s a flesh wound, he tells me. You’ll be alright.

I’ve been shot! The bullet tore through the stairs where I had been hiding and went through the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. The man, who introduces himself as Bruce, shines his light on me and bandages my hand, applying a tourniquet. He also puts gauze and tape on the cut on my face from the shattering of the shed window. I see his holstered pistol- that he had meant to kill me with, I thought- as he works. He tells me to hold my hand above the level of my heart and while the pain doesn’t stop, the bleeding does shortly. He searches the bathroom medicine cabinet for an antiseptic but there is nothing. He does not apologize for shooting me but says it was an accident.

Never can tell, he says. Anymore you never can tell.

Elsie and I crashed blindly through the field in the dark. I could barely see the crest of the road ahead of us, and I dove to the edge of the culvert, crawling into the mud inside, pushing her ahead of me. Her screams echoed in the small metal tunnel, and I thrust my hand over her mouth.

You’ve got to be quiet; I told her urgently. Those things will hear you and they’ll get us too! Her screams subsided to crying, then that same bunched red face. She hyperventilated and I put the palm of my hand on her chest, trying to soothe her. We’ll stay here until light. I don’t think they can fit in here. And we stayed there, with my one arm around the terrified child and the other keeping pressure on my cut face, and the things clicked farther away.

The dawn broke in silence. No clicking. We clambered out, soaked in mud, Elsie’s eyes gone blank. I took her by the hand, and we headed southeast again, trying not to think about Robbie. I had almost forgotten about Rosa and Joey in the horror of the night, and when I did remember, I also tried to push that away.

We sat at midday on a half-buried rock at the roadside. I ate a few bites of gamey meat and Elsie, who didn’t want that, ate one of the handful of fruit snack packets I still had. She said nothing, staring off into the distance, the red still not draining from her tiny face. I felt horrible for her. The road rolled out endlessly in front of us as we trundled along in the stillness of the afternoon, her silently holding my hand. Eventually the road bent away from southeast again, so we cut across the fields. She showed no interest in the flowers this time. We crested the hill in the middle of the field, and it dropped off sharply. Shocked at the sight below us, I clamped my hand over her mouth again, tackling her to the ground. Ssh, I said, and she just stared back at me.

At the foot of the sharp hill was one of the giants. It was standing still, but its enormous body seemed to move with the thickets of tentacles twisting and shifting. The mist swirled around it like a cloak of night. I stared at it, unbelieving. This was the first time I’d seen one of the giants this close, and it was as awful as I could ever have imagined. It had a fetid smell, the petrichor of wet earth and rot. Its head moved slightly, and I could see the emerald sparkle of its eye.

I didn’t know what to do. Elsie stared at the thing resignedly. She’d lost everything and it showed in her dead eyes. She was so young, too young to comprehend or process the horror that surrounded us. I uncovered her mouth and we both looked at the thing, like looking at death itself. The top of its head must have been a hundred feet off the ground.

Its titanic head moved again, tilting back slightly. The mist swirled around it up into the air, impossibly high. It lowed, a voice so deep it was barely audible. It spoke in vibrations more than in sounds. I watched, fascinated. It lowed again, raising its haunches as it roared. I wondered if it was calling to its kind but I neither heard nor felt any others approach.

Then, horribly, it lowed again, louder, harsher. Its rear feet shuffled slightly, and the mist spread. Suddenly, from between those back legs, a shape fell out with an earth-shaking crash. I felt my eyes widen as I realized the new shape was a baby. It was smaller than its mother but the same monster, complete with a shroud of mist and writhing tentacles. The newborn thing stood, hesitant on new legs, and trumpeted its own roar. A swirl of the mist spread up the hill.

Mother turned to baby, and I shrunk away, getting lower to the ground. Down, I said quietly to Elsie, who lay down lazily. She lay her head on her folded arms, eyes staring through me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at the foot of the hill- they were breeding!

The baby roared again and took a couple of awkward steps, the thunder of its feet shaking the ground below Elsie and me. More steps, more washes of that awful mist cascading around it. Then, to my horror, the vibrations from the newborn giant stamping its feet vibrated loose a rock embedded in the hillside not far from Elsie and me. It shook, came loose, and tumbled down the hill end over end. It crashed to a halt near the pair of giant monsters below, and the newborn looked up to see where the new thing had come from.

And saw me.

My heart froze in my chest and my limbs refused to work. I was paralyzed with terror- I’d seen the giants, but they’d never seen me. Like I was too insignificant to bother with. The smaller thing, though, roared and a swirl of its black mist rolled halfway up the hill. I reached over and grabbed Elsie’s hand, readying to flee but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. Below, the mother beast turned, its green eyes flashing angrily. It roared too, much louder than baby, and the sound was like a ship’s foghorn right at my ear tinted with the crackling sound of blazing fire. When she roared, I felt like my body would shake itself to pieces, and more of that mist swirled outward. I watched in horror as her mist, much stronger than the newborn’s, rolled up the hill and kept coming.

Run! I screamed at Elsie, finally forcing myself to stand. As I did, her limp hand slipped from mine, and I stumbled a couple of steps back the way we had come. The deafening sounds of the giants on the far side of the hill shook the ground beneath me. I looked back at the girl, and she hadn’t moved, still laying with her head on her arm. The hand I’d held lay loosely akimbo beside her.

Elsie!

As I watched, the first tendrils of the black mist crested the hill and rolled over her. She didn’t move as the black fingers reached out, washing her under like a giant wave. Terrified, I started to reach for her, and through the mist, I saw the obscured shape of her head turn towards me.

Oh, she said softly between the monsters’ roars, almost the sound of surprise. The mist dissipated and I went to her, but there was little left. Whatever the mist was had all but disintegrated her. She had been four years old and then she was little more than a pile of ash, shaped like a girl. I stared heartbroken at her tiny remains, and when the roars continued and another wash of that terrible mist crested the hill, I fled. Alone.

Where are you coming from? Bruce asks after dressing my wound, the cold daylight breaking through the eastern windows. I tell him Brownsville and where I’d been. Carverville, Merton’s Landing. How is it out that way? I shake my head. I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to remember- it’s all too much.

Where are you heading, then? I look at him, tired, my hand screaming in agony. Southeast. He considers this for a moment. I’ve been there; he tells me. Nothing left. Wouldn’t go that way, if I was you.

I think back to Rosa. And Joey. I don’t know where they are, and I think they’re dead. I don’t know how I’m not dead myself. I have no survival skills, but I am still alive, so maybe they might be too. I sling my pack over my shoulder and clutch my found flashlight and knife.

Heading southeast, I remember writing on the note to Rosa, and duct taping it to the farmhouse door. I will keep heading southeast, keeping my promises. My direction and the last words I wrote to her: I hope.