Chapter 2: Outside the Gates

  Neither me nor my mother tried pleading at the door for a second chance. We knew none would be given.

  The ash billowed behind us like it was trying to push us away from our old home and into the vast unknown.

  Ahead of us, the land looked desiccative. The cracked landscape reminded me of a scene I would very much like to forget. Pale ridges jutted from the ground at regular intervals and strange angles, their surfaces bleached from years beneath the angry old sun.

  As we walked deeper, the ridges began to arch overhead. Their curves were too clean, too symmetrical. What I thought were support pillars narrowed into points where they pierced the ground.

  It took a moment to register. This wasn’t a structure.

  We were walking through the corpse of something, something impossibly large.

  I looked up. The “ceiling” shading us from the sun was a spine, its vertebrae the size of tractors. Ribs, thicker than any tree I’d seen even in dataslates, dug into the ground like anchors, holding the skeleton aloft.

  I turned to my mother to see if she had noticed. She didn’t say anything. Just pulled her scarf tighter, even though it was far too hot.

  We got to the end of the skeleton and our respite from the pounding sun was over. I looked up to the sickly blue sky, it was hazy and too bright for my eyes used to years inside the dome and underground. Suddenly I froze.

  Birds.

  Real birds, gliding above my head in lazy circles. Their wings spread open wide, their dark feathers had a glossy grime to them, it caught the light like an old metal left too long in the sun.

  Never before had I seen a bird, not outside of a dataslate or farm list at least.

  Back home, or atleast what used to be home, birds were kept stacked in vertical farms. They were fed through tubes directly on their bodies, being bred in the most efficient way possible the birds were used for all they could be. They were grown for meat, feathers, even their nails were used to be ground up and put in nutrient paste.

  The birds back home had their feathers clipped and were equipped with noise dampeners so that their noise did not affect the mood stability score of nearby homes. Keeping a bird as a pet was strictly off limits, they were far to unpredictable creatures.

  These birds though felt different, they felt wild, alive, free in the purest sense.

  I didn’t realize what they were, I had no idea how beautiful birds were with the naked eye. That's what I thought back then at least.

  Looking back I see those damned vultures for what they really were.

  Trash collectors.

  At the time, I thought maybe the birds were just watching us curiously, not used to seeing humans. I didn’t know enough to be scared. I didn’t know enough to realize what these birds really thought of us. Not yet.

  As we continued our journey into the unknown, I walked along one of the many cracks in the landscape trying to balance myself on this jagged line as we walked.

  We walked for a long time and eventually the ground began to change beneath our feet. The ground became softer, dead detritus clung to our feet more with each step. Each step another crunch as the layers of moss and dead matter was crushed beneath us.

  The air grew heavy suddenly too. It was a damp, heavy kind of air. That was when my mothers breath became noticeably more shallow. I told myself it was the heat. It was just the heat.

  Out of nowhere my mom sputtered out “Wait, stop moving now.” I heard the urgency in her voice and immediately stopped in my tracks.

  Then I heard it.

  At first the sound was so faint I could barely hear it, a quick papery rustling, it was like a wind going through dead grass. Then it grew even louder, a stampede growing closer.

  The first one burst through the fog, and brushed right past me on my right. Then three more close behind, then I lost count so many ran past me.

  Deer. Or something masquerading as deer.

  They didn’t look alive, the deer looked like they had been dead and rotting for weeks. Their skin was drawn unnaturally tight, it was discolored and falling off in large patches. Their antlers looked wrong, too sharp, bending at unnatural angles.

  It seemed as if the deer hadn’t even noticed us, they just ran, sprinting in a blind panic. Their hooves were cracked and broken but they kept running. Moss and rot was flung behind them with every step.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Then just a few steps ahead of us one of the deer tripped. It fell hard, legs cracking, bending in ways they shouldn't. The sound it made when the weight of its body hit the ground was the same sound my father made when he hit the table and it sickened me.

  Its torso ruptured and a thick reddish black ooze flowed from it. The deer didn’t make a sound as it died, I think it may have already been dead, piloted by something deep inside that deer.

  It did not stand back up.

  The body began to sink into itself, the black ooze dripping into the cracks of the earth at our feet moving god knows where. The smell hit us like a truck, it smelled of rotted meat and burned flesh.

  I stood there in a stunned silence, frozen in place. My mother grabbed my arm and shook me.

  “Logan,” she whispered. “Something else is coming. Something bigger.”

  She was right, the ground now began to shake slightly. Something big was coming and fast.

  It was not prey, like those deer we saw.

  It was a hunter, a predator.

  I dropped to my knees beside the collapsed rotting deer. I tried my best not to gag and reached inside its chest cavity. My fingers searched inside and they made contact with a long curved rib. The surface was rough near the base but as it curved towards the tip it had a jagged edge at the end.

  I yanked the rib as hard as I could until it finally came free, I wiped my face clean from the dead deer viscera that splashed on me and I stood.

  The noise was even closer now, the ground shaking even more, heavy pounding footsteps raced towards us.

  Then it too broke through the layer of fog surrounding us. Though unlike the deer it took full notice of us.

  It was a massive beast, the size of a bear. It walked on four limbs, it stood there observing us for a moment. The beast hunched over to view us, and twitched as it sat there. I noticed that this creature didn't breathe like us, every time it should have breathed out through its mouth these vents along its back opened up and pushed spores out.

  One of its limbs was unlike the others, it was longer, almost plantlike, as if the rot and tried to grow him a new arm but it was all wrong. The color was off, it was too long, and there was fungus and rot wrapping around that limb more than the rest of its body.

  The creature's head was the most horrifying part.

  Its mouth opened like any other beast, horizontal, filled with jagged broken teeth, too uneven to close its mouth cleanly. But above that running from the top of its skull to the bottom of its snout, there was a long, vertical seam. A split that should not have been there.

  I watched as this line slowly peeled open, a wet squelching came as it opened. Its skull now split open, revealing the red sinuous muscle, black rot, and twitching nerves like exposed wiring. It was like watching a fruit rot in reverse, something inside was pushing itself out, hungry to be seen.

  The two halves flexed like they were a secondary pair of jaws, grinding against each other with a twitchy muscle tension. And deep inside I saw even more teeth. Thin, needle-like teeth, set almost too deep to see in the pink tissue where I imagine a brain should have been.

  This thing didn't just eat.

  It opened, it was built to consume.

  Then it moved.

  Not a slow stalk like some predator toying with its prey, no, it lunged at me.

  The massive creature hit the ground with so much force I felt it through my boots. Dirt and spores sprayed up in the air like smoke as its limbs hit the earth.

  I dove to the right without thinking, my shoulder hit the ground hard, but I still clutched the rib tightly.

  The beast skidded past me as it charged again, and turned around towards me with such ferocity. Its legs bent at all the wrong angles, it was too fast, my mind whirled and I had no idea what to do.

  My mother was screaming behind me but I couldn’t really hear it, I was solely focused on this hulking behemoth in front of me. I scrambled back on my feet facing towards this bear thing.

  I didn’t think, I just stood there, frozen, fight or flight locked in a stalemate.

  It lunged at me again, I yelled and shoved the rib towards the creature as I braced myself.

  The rib connected with the beast in the side of its neck. A disgusting crunch rang out as bone connected with bone. Black rotted blood sprayed from the wound I inflicted.

  The beast let out a deep guttural scream, it sounded like it was trying to mimic a human scream but couldn't.

  The beast slammed into me and knocked me on my ass. It put one paw on me and held me in place on the ground as it opened its maw of a head up, each one of the four corners opening up like a flower as it moved its head closer to me. The needle-like teeth deep inside its skull pulsed as it got closer to me.

  Before I could even think I moved my arm and shoved the rib into the pink mass of flesh inside the bear's open skull and pulled down.

  The cut was deep, I must have hit something important because the creature began to seize up. Its limbs began flailing while it writhed on the ground.

  I rolled away from the beast and caught my breath, the blackened, bloody rib still in my grasp. Black rot was dripping down my arms and face as I had been sprayed by it when I stabbed that creature.

  I turned back towards the beast and saw it shudder one last time and its body collapsed in on itself just like the deer. Black ooze seeped into the cracks of the earth, wherever this rot came from it was returning there.

  I stood up, covered in blood that was not my own, hands locked around the rib like it was part of my body.

  My mother sat there in shock, hands covering her face.

  The sky began to darken, black clouds started to form above us. At first I was relieved, I got to have a shower and wash all this blood off. I held my hand out expectantly waiting for this “rain” I had heard so much about in school. And liquid came down, but it was not the rain I was taught about.

  A drop came down from the sky and landed on my outstretched hand and a “hiss” noise happened, my hand began to burn and I realized that it was raining acid. I covered up myself with my jacket but it was of no use, the acid ate through whatever it hit.

  I yelled for my mother “Cover yourself, now! We have to find shelter.” She looked horrified, and replied “Logan! Look there is a shack under that cliff ledge.” I saw the shack she was talking about, it wasn't much, but it was the only option we had.

  So we ran, faster than we ever had, towards that shack.

  We didn't stop to think. We didn't stop to breathe.

  We just ran, not from the rain, not from the monster, but from the world itself.