.
.
..
When he awoke, it was already too late.
Everything was wrong.
All his windows were broken. It was past eleven, yet it was still dark outside. What eventually roused him from his sleep was a peculiar knocking sound echoing all throughout his home. A tapping that came from everywhere. He got up from his bed, his mind still lagging behind.
His alarm clock had been stolen. As had most of his jewelry. More tapping. It was louder now.
He descended the staircase, and passed his bookshelf. His books were all gone. Even the bibles. The tapping increased its ferocity.
His pictures had been stolen too. He didn't see her face when he passed the front room.
As he entered his living room, his television missing, he was aroused from his sleep state by a sight present on the far wall.
A star, in red spray paint. Within, two words were scrawled.
Happy Hunting
Beneath the graffiti a single rifle was placed against the wall. He was not of the profession to know its make or model.
The tapping startled him, his mind now caught up with the world, he figured out what it was.
Rain.
It hasn't properly rained in this town for fourteen years.
Grabbing the rifle, he ran outside to observe.
The rain was wrong.
The rain burned his skin, so he sought shelter.
The clouds, too. They were too low, too dark. Like ash hanging in the air, and moving fast. They all seemed to be moving away from one point. He moved his eyes, following the clouds to there origin point.
A towering plume of flame and dust in the distance, in the shape of a gargantuan mushroom.
A pillar of fire.
And there, next to the pillar was a shape. Too large to be a living thing, yet it moved like one. He swore it looked at him. He ran back inside.
He would have to abandon the sermon he was writing, at least for now.
..
.
.
The clouds cleared after about four days. After that, the strange things began to show up in the desert.
He had to leave his house when he ran out of food. Unsure of what he would find out there, in the ruins. He wandered for three days without encountering anyone. In the towns he passed through he encountered the Red Star drawn in every nook and cranny. Sometimes, it was accompanied by strands of DNA, or a portrait of a man. Sometimes it was drawn over a corpse. He didn't want to think about the possibility that it may be drawn in blood. The words scrawled along the walls would reference a game. Perhaps there was something he had missed. Was this all some game? What game could cause this, and, for that matter, what was "this"?
He found some meat, hidden in a cellar, in jars. He ate his fill and moved on. After a week of this, he met the first lizard.
Since the moment he saw the creature by the Pillar he had been afraid. Worried, in an existential sense, of what he might find outside his home. The lizards were his first sight of the strange things. About as tall as a man, and very resistant to damage, with four small horns protruding from their heads. They come out of the sand, emerging like newborns, but always looking to kill. His first encounter left him with many scars. Shooting the things didn't work. He couldn't kill them, he had to run away. That is, in the sun. Once they are tricked into the shade, they start shrinking, and a shot to the head will finish the job. That's how he evaded death the first time. The shade saved him. Now, he had plenty of food.
After another two days, he met the sand people. Extremely hostile, extremely fast. A bullet is usually enough to disperse them, but being made of sand they often come in large numbers. That same day he encountered the "blips". Things that existed only in your mind, as flashes of color on the edges of your vision. He once let too many swamp his mind, and he nearly passed out. The only way to rid yourself of them is to concentrate on not thinking about them. They reproduce when you think about them.
At night the howlers kept him awake. He discovered that if he covered his ears, they couldn't find him. Every now and then the roots would rise up to grab him, attempting to pull him under the sand. Cutting them with knives or even teeth proved to be successful. Of all the strange things, the amalgams were the most horrific. Incomprehensible masses of hot steel, flesh, and wet concrete, several stories tall. They wander the plains, always hungry, like everything is out in the desert. He once tried to fight one, in a moment of desperation. Afterwards, he decided to keep his distance.
He's lucky he left with only a few burns.
While not actively hostile, the shadows made the journey the most difficult. Patches of darkness with no source that swam across the sand faster than human sight. They mess with time. Or maybe it was perception of time? Once caught in one, he would feel as though he were stuck for weeks, or days. No, it was that it kept him for days but made it feel like only a short amount of time. He couldn't keep the timing straight. He didn't know how long ago it was that he left his home. He couldn't find his way back. Did the shadows mess with spacial awareness too? No, they couldn't. They didn't. He found himself moving closer to the exclusion zone. Wasn't he in it already?
He hadn't encountered any people yet. With the shadows it was hard to tell how long it had been, but he knew it was too long. Too much time without seeing another human, aside from the odd aircraft passing overhead. It couldn't be right. There were of course the soldiers, prowling the abandoned towns and gas stations. Clad in black uniforms and helmets that obscured their faces. The Red Star was emblazoned on their chests. He had confronted them many times, but he didn't want to let himself believe they were human. It made them easier to fight off.
He continued to wander.
He continued to lose himself.
He continued to stray towards the tower of fire in the distance.
Then he returned to his home.
..
He never found his house again, but after what felt like years he came across his old home. The sun was setting, bathing the old chapel in an ethereal purple light. The place seemed to him a lost palace, ancient and magical in the way only an old chapel can be. As he entered he noticed that its windows were broken as well. A shame, the ornate stained glass remained untouched since he was a boy. An empty church is a sad sight. Especially when he could still vaguely remember it being so full of life. Every Sunday the place would be packed to the doors, completely filled with people who came to hear his words. People he was close to. People he loved.
People he wished were still around.
He was roused from his thinking by the sight of two figures in the front pews, sitting before the oddly undisturbed creation window.
A small girl, she looked like she had been crying.
Beside her, a winged woman shrouded in bright light. She had only one wing, on her right side. Her left side was obscured, but he could make out several dark, jagged shapes.
The woman turned and looked at him.
Her look was cold and analyzing.
He felt her gaze into his very soul.
She was asking him to make a promise.
She nodded, and vanished into thin air.
He walked up the the front pew and sat beside the girl.
She wiped her tears.
She looked to be about fourteen years old, no. No, she was younger than that. Around five or six. "You know I used to work here," he told her. She smiled slightly. He asked her what her name was. "Susie," she said. He told her he used to know a girl named Susie, and that they used to be very close.
He asked her why she was crying, and she told him.
"My friend, I left my friend. I was running away and then he fell but I can't get him now. I left him…"
He was silent for a moment. Then he asked her where it was she left her friend.
She pointed at the creation window. She was pointing at the now faded tower of ash and flame, a shadow against the red light of the setting sun.
He told her they would get her friend back.
..
The two slept in the church and set off for the blast site at dawn. He wanted them to stay on as high ground as they could, hopping from rock to rock to avoid the shadows. If there was any entity he didn't want the girl to confront, it was the shadows. She lagged behind him, having to leap between rocks he could step onto. She was slow. Too slow. He turned when he could no longer hear her belabored steps. She had been pulled down by two large, sandy appendages. Her head went under the sand before he could retaliate. He ran to where she was and dug the muzzle of his rifle into the ground. He fired three shots before attempting to dig her out. When he finally got her free, she wasn't breathing.
Then she was.
She also had a bullet in her shoulder. He decided they should make camp for the night, so he could treat her wound.
While he worked, he asked her what happened to her parents.
"I never had parents. I live in a big white room with my friend, and the men in white coats."
He asked her why she was out in the desert now.
"A big flash happened and my room broke. I tried to run but my friend fell. When I tried to grab him I hurt myself. Usually I don't but…"
She trailed off, before suddenly lighting up with excitement.
"OH! BUT THEN THE LADY FOUND ME! THE SHINY LADY! YOU SAW HER TOO RIGHT?"
He nodded.
"She helped me! She made me feel really good, and she brought me to the church. She let me cry, and gave me good food. It was fun!"
He chuckled, "You don't think this is very fun, do you?"
"No, it's too hard! But I want my friend back so we gotta get back to my house!"
He patted her head and she smiled at him, a tired smile.
"Well what do you like to do for fun?"
She yawned.
"I like to sing songs. I used to do it all the time with my friend."
He looked up at the cluster of bright stars above them.
"Maybe once we find him you can sing me one of your songs."
They talked with each other for another hour before she fell asleep.
The next morning once they had packed up he picked her up and put her on his shoulders.
He told her it was to make the trek more fun.
..
He had expected carnage.
He had expected to see a disaster.
He had not expected this.
The still flaming ruins of what appeared to be once imposing complex lay before him.
He could imagine the monolithic structure this used to be, before the innards were blown outwards and every ceiling caved in.
The surrounding area was littered with rubble of all kinds. He couldn't discern an origin for most of it, considering some of it was a thick and mechanically cut steel.
There, in the center, a gaping maw teethed with hot, twisted metal from which somehow still poured fumes and fire into a towering pillar of smoke.
He hadn't paid much attention to the radiation before, but he could see a faint glow emanating from the ground that worried him. Her friend probably hadn't survived in this place. Though, by this point he had learned anything was possible.
She yelled for him, pointing out a large chunk of burnt concrete against a wall. "My friend is stuck behind here! I remember! I can't move it!" She pushed with all her strength, with no success. He walked over to assist her, and moved the stone with great effort.
Behind the concrete was a small tunnel that led into the facility. It looked to be about fourteen meters long, with an opening at the other end. What worried him, however were the pieces of sharp black rock embedded in the walls all along the sides of the tunnel. The pieces had the same glow around them, more intense than outside. Just standing at the entrance he tasted metal in his mouth. His hands began to turn a light shade of red. To go though this tunnel would be suicide. He looked at Susie. She was getting weaker, her wound was still bleeding. Without some help, she wouldn't make it, in the tunnel or out in the wilderness. He looked back into the tunnel and saw the face of the woman. He remembered her commanding gaze. Her longful, yearning, begging expression. The promise he made to her.
He steeled himself. He yelled at Susie that he'd be back in just a second and entered the tunnel.
Hot.
But not exactly.
There was a heat, but it felt more like a burning sensation beneath his skin than real warmth.
His hands were cracking. He could feel his feet beginning to bleed. His steps became slower as he went, but he pressed on. His vision went blurry for a moment. He tried to blink the blips away, but they didn't go. His joints began to ache, his breathing became labored. He felt his back begin to crack and bleed before he entered the other end of the tunnel.
Some sort of drainage receptacle, with a dim light and an inch of dark brown water. There floating in the water, he saw it.
A small stuffed white bear.
He dropped to his knees and picked up the bear.
He began to laugh.
It was violent.
The kind of laugh that came with tears.
But it came with coughs and blood this time too. He made sure not to get any on the bear.
He was angry for a moment.
It was just a moment, but he hated himself for it. In his mind he asked the woman for forgiveness. He couldn't tell if she had answered.
He used this hatred, turned it into determination. He still had to make it back.
The trek back through the tunnel was hell. Perhaps literally. He had thought about hell so many times in his life. He wondered if he would be able to stand it, if it were him. With the thought of his promise in mind he now knew how easy the pain was to work through.
With his cracked lips and his labored breathing and his aching joints he cradled the bear, trying to shield it, protect it from contamination. In his fervor, he didn't even realize that the bear wasn't dirty.
When he finally left the tunnel, he collapsed.
Susie screamed and helped prop him up against the wall.
His hearing was shot, he couldn't understand her.
When he handed her the bear her eyes lit up like stars. She began to cry.
So did he.
His eyelids became heavy.
He saw her hug the bear. When she did her wound stopped bleeding. He nodded, his promise fulfilled.
As he closed his eyes, he saw her smile at him, and he smiled back.
The last thing he heard was a light tapping all around him.
It sounded like rain.
