YA Sci-Fi/Dystopian
Date Published: 01-01-2024
Plug your ears. And whatever you do, don't look. The war for humanity has begun.
Cameron “Jet” Shipley was there when they arrived in 2026. He, and everyone else, lived through the next decade and a half, learning to hide. Learning to never make a sound. Learning the most important rule of all:
You just..don’t…look.
The year is now 2042, and humanity is eking out an existence in the shadows.
Cameron and his team are sent out on a recon mission in Clarksville Tennessee, with events and developments that may alter the trajectory of Earth’s fate… and his own.
Joined by newcomers Bassett and Trudy, Cameron and his brother Rut will have to contend with a powerful force that has laid waste to the planet and annihilated over eighty-five percent of Earth’s civilization.
Will Jet’s expeditions lead him on a slippery slope of discovery that demands accountability and answers?
Or will it plunge the earth, and everything in it, into further dissonance?
“Aliens” meets “A Quiet Place” in this dystopian sci-fi thriller series.
1 | REALITY
There was no way I was going to make it. That was my reality.
I had had this damned thing in my pocket for
seventeen days, and had successfully evaded becoming anyone’s dinner so far,
but for how much longer? I had no
idea. It was getting hot, whatever it
was, and it wanted out of my pocket.
Markus didn’t even tell me what it could do or why it was so
important. Just gave half to me and half
to Rut, and then bolted. I only got a
few brief looks at it, but it was some kind of stone or gem, about the size of
a silver dollar, flat, and encased in some kind of silver circlet with strange
glyphs on it. Now I kept it wrapped in a
rag.
The back of my throat scratched as I muscled
down a swallow, and I feverishly swiped away whatever bug it was that I
suddenly felt on the back of my neck, hiding there behind that dumpster. I was pretty sure they had passed by already,
but with gorgons, you could never be sure.
The way they would glide noiselessly across the ground was just plain
creepy as hell.
I remember when my little brother Rutledge,
aka “Rutty,” and I would skip rocks across the alleyway during the heat of the
summer when it was safer, and Jackson would come looking for us to whisk us
back into school. It was all fun and games until he forgot to keep it down and
yelled at us. Then that berserker gorgon
got him. We called those ones berserkers
because they were just weirder than the rest: flailing and twitching, but also
faster, and much, much meaner. It was
weird; they came a few years after the original gorgons. But no one ever saw where they came from,
apparently.
I never understood how any gorgon could hear
a rock ricocheting across dirt up to 100 meters away, but it got there fast and
then did its thing. Jackson never saw it
coming. That trippy Medusa-esque stare
they give you: I don’t know what it is that comes out of them, but it’s some
kind of paralyzing telepathy…something psychological…and it got him fair and
square. Slap a few snakes on their heads
and it would have completed the ensemble, straight out of Greek mythology. But these things didn’t slither…they sliced
through the air at you. There was of
course nothing we could do once it had zeroed him.
We tried to look away as it came in, and then
just ate him slowly. I’ll never forget
that. The sound of it. That was seven, no, eight and a half years
ago now. I can still remember his stinky
coffee breath when he’d catch us playing.
Kinda wished we could wake up and find him skulking around the alleyway
trying to catch us again. But that’ll
never happen.
Rut had scouted up ahead, and I could see the
occasional green pings of his laser-pointer: a priceless treasure we had
ransacked from a home on a previous recon.
Last name Ramsey, I think. They had the good sense to clear out
before all hell broke loose. I envy them, but I thank them more that they left
some goods behind. Where they were now
was anyone’s guess, if they were even still alive.
Twenty-three-year-old me took one last look
back and mustered up the courage to raise myself up over the lip of the
dumpster, hardly daring to breathe. The
night air betrayed me and revealed my slow steady fog breath in short
wisps. No fair. I pulled back. It just didn’t feel like it was time yet.
Good thing too. I checked myself and
started. Just as I did, another gorgon
came floating down from above, not twenty feet from where I was.
I was trying to remain calm, but it just
stayed right there, hovering. I glanced
at my watch. I only had six more minutes
and the Blockade would close for good for the night. I’d never make it out of this zinc plant and
back in time. I looked back and Rut
glared at me open-eyed, silently mouthing “Come on!” I shook my head and looked back.
For whatever reason that gorgon just wouldn’t
move. It was like it had gone to sleep
or something. It wasn’t looking my way,
at least not yet. I looked down at my
watch again. Five minutes. The Blockade had to be, what, six hundred
feet away, out past the alley of the zinc plant and over the yawning
field? Six hundred feet divided by three
hundred seconds. That’s two feet per
second. I could do that like nobody’s
business. My stomach growled. I needed to get in there. It was getting colder. I shivered.
I looked back at Rutty. He was watching it
too. No one in their right mind would mess with a gorgon. We looked up at them when they came, admiringly
somehow, trusting naively that this would be the dawn of a new era of intergalactic
growth and some kind of evolution. What
hubris. I’ll never trust again.
Rut looked at me and back at the gorgon. It had started to slowly shift somewhat to
the left, like it had detected something.
I scanned the ground over where it seemed to be looking. Was it a rat?
A mole? No way to be sure. Those
gorgons had such good hearing; but they could only track something if it
moved. All I could do was stay still.
I looked down at my watch again. It had
fogged over a bit. Stupid mist. Wherever a group of them gathered you could
always count on misting. That’s what we
called it when that translucent fog came rolling in. It clung to the gorgons and swirled around
silently as if to mask their approach and presence. It was theatrical, for sure, but super
freaking cold. And we had all learned to
control our breathing and our heartbeats, like we were taught, in the name of
zero volume.
I wiped the moisture off of my watch
face. Four minutes. Two point five feet per second. My strides would have to be longer and
loping. It would be close.
I reached slowly into my pocket. My mouth creased into an open o as I
monitored the gorgon. My fatigues were
damp from the fog, and I couldn’t get my fingers around the rock. It was even hotter than before. What the heck was this thing anyway? Markus never said what exactly it was before
he handed it to me and ran off. He just
screamed to get it back to the Blockade.
I have no idea if he even got away, as I’ve been living in the shadows
to keep it safe.
But that’s what he wanted us to do.
Was now the time though? He never said.
My fingers touched it and as they did, my
right sneaker lost its grip on the pavement and skidded out past the dumpster
with a God-awful cement scratch. I
stiffened.
The gorgon whirled around and hissed. I hate that.
It’s the most spine-chilling sound they make. My heart stopped as I kept my leg bone-still
on the pavement. I slowly moved my eyes
and shifted my head ever so slightly to where I could see Rutty: his eyes were
ringed with fear. We both knew that if
they were going to get me, then that meant that he had to leave me and take
off, so that at least one of us could make it.
After all, he had the other half of it. They would be preoccupied with
me. That was the whole plan. If we got separated, maybe our Blockade’s
luck would hold and at least one half of it would make it back.
I could feel the gorgon staring down the
alley. Good thing they couldn’t see
worth a damn in the day or
night. But their smelling and hissing,
I’d had just about enough.
Rut shook his head at me as if he guessed my
thoughts and knew what I wanted to do. I
could tell he was flashing his eyes back and forth between where I was and
where it was at, hovering silently there yet moving closer, every hiss making
its freaky neck bob down and up as it tried to zero me.
I didn’t really have any other option. My ammo was spent, I’d lost my Beretta, and
Rut had the RPG launcher. It was too
dark to see if he was even loading it, and now that the gorgon was practically
staring us down, it might get him before he even had a chance to cock it.
The menacing shadow drew nearer. I couldn’t see it, but the sniffing grew
louder and louder. I tried to keep my
leg perfectly still as I slowly extracted the amulet from my pocket, willing my
bones to stay in a state of suspended animation. A single bead of sweat fell from my lanky
hair onto my neck. I knew then that I
was in deep fear. I looked at my
watch. Two minutes and ten seconds. Four point six feet per second. This was going to be close.
I could dimly make out Rut lifting the
launcher up over his shoulder from under that tarp.
Without warning, the object of the gorgon’s
previous fascination across the street revealed itself again, causing the
creature to whip around and sneer at it with that spine-chilling hiss. It was an innocent tabby cat, hunting a mouse
or some other poor morsel. The gorgon’s
back arced reflexively as it moved away from me and back toward the cat. Gorgons aren’t picky, and a cat is a dainty
morsel for sure. I didn’t waste any
time, and neither did Rut. Everything
appeared to slow drastically, and more sweat beads cascaded from my hair onto
my neck. My left sneaker pushed me up
with the speed of a gazelle, and I lifted my right leg, which had just started
to tingle.
The gorgon, fixated on the cat, heard all of
our commotion of course, and whirled right back around. I was still holding my breath, but the rest
of my body screamed to run. That’s
when the gorgon saw me and let out that bone-freezing shriek that they do.
And that’s when Rut launched. The torpedo sailed right past me at a hundred
and twenty meters per second, and my face was baked in the heat of its
exhaust. I could feel my hair thrown
back and the sweat get hot on my neck.
We called them torpedoes because they just did so much more damage than
your typical RPG. Our guys had souped
them up. They were incredibly incendiary
when they met their mark.
Ain’t no way I was gonna get eaten today.
Rut launched that sucker, and then
immediately tore away up the alley in front of me. I wasn’t gonna look back.
Then, the explosion.
The gorgon was vaporized instantly of
course. Pretty much anything can be
vaporized. Sorry, Cat. But where there’s one, there’s more. And now they were on to us. And they could move like the wind. They don’t like heat, and their power is in
thin air where they can move quickly.
But so could we. I was never quite as fast as Rut, and every
single race we had relegated me to second place once more. But I nearly caught up with him this time,
and the sweat was dripping down into my eyes as I bolted. I clutched the amulet hard, and the heat of
it burnt my hand.
The hisses grew louder.
They taught us to run fast, and they taught
us not to look back. “Always listen,”
they said. “Just… listen.” I had seen what happened when you
looked. You just… don’t… look. Jackson taught me that.
So, amidst the stamping thumps of my Reeboks
on that cold alleyway, with nothing but thin, decreasing night between me and
my assailants, I listened. If the hisses
grew louder, you just tried to run faster.
I had already seen enough to know what was happening behind me. Their arms would be outstretched right about
now, and their lower jaws would be descending, straining at the thin dead skin
under their hollow eye sockets. If you thought they were getting closer you
were supposed to drop, then get up and change course like greased lightning.
Hopefully they would skid past you.
Maybe two hundred and twenty-five feet now?
My watch buzzed softly against my frantic
arms. I could feel it amidst the
pounding rhythm of my desperate feet.
The one-minute alarm, and then the Blockade would close. I could see the tree line approaching, framed
against the night sky, yawning up as I drew closer.
And there it was, ahead…that great and
glorious wall. Rutty was almost
there. The gorgons knew not to come too
close, or they’d get hammered by the guns.
They were flesh and bone creatures like most other lifeforms, and they
could be blown apart, sure. But their
most powerful weapon was fear.
I wasn’t going to look at my watch, and I
wasn’t going to look back.
The Blockade drew nearer. My best guess was it was still some hundred
feet away. It was a wide gaping hole in
a berm, and underneath was our sanctuary.
Gritting my teeth, I began to hear them
behind me, slinking closer and closer. I
could practically feel one of their arms wafting behind me. That hiss…oh that freaking hiss. They also have this unnerving hum when they
can sense they’re going to eat soon. It
was almost like singing. A horrible song.
In my peripheral I was sure that was the blueish-green
mist overtaking me as they drew closer and closer.
Thirty seconds. I had never run so fast in my life. Each little sound behind me was like a death
knell to my courage and stamina. I could
feel the tears coming, mixing with my sweat, and my heart labored. God, please don’t let me trip.
Twenty. Eighteen.
I kept running.
Fifteen.
Twelve. Nine.
I kept running.
I felt the hair stand up on my neck as one
reached for me and scratched my shoulder through my shirt.
And all of a sudden, like a mist driven away
by the wind, they sailed upwards and departed.
Whether it was the sound of the Blockade blaring its horns, or the
Captain screaming for men to lock and load, I don’t know.
Four. Three.
I kept running.
I jumped across the threshold as a shaft of
warm air blew over me: my own exhaust as I bellowed across the last few feet of
open field and hurled myself past the door, slamming into Rut who had landed
just ahead of me with his gun drawn, pointing at the door. He grunted as I knocked the wind out of him.
Two. One.
Clang.
The Blockade had closed. I was in. I heard the momentary muted thunder
of gunfire above me, and guessed that at least one of those things bought it,
but they collect and eat their own, so of course we’d never know.
For now, I was in.
Sorry, Cat.
• • • • •
“I wasn’t going to use it; I wouldn’t even
know how.”
My defense rang hollow, as they could see it
all on the security cameras, and they knew what I was going for in my pocket.
Many years ago, they were able to tap into the zinc plant cameras, so now that
worked against me.
“You were! You were going to try to use it! You were given one charge: keep it
safe and bring it back here. Not
to use it. You don’t even know what it
is or what it does. You were going for
it in your pocket, and Rut saw the whole thing!”
I sighed and rubbed my aching shoulder. Medical had patched it up after the gorgon
scratch, and I now sported a nice white rectangle. But arguing was pointless. So, I argued.
“So? Doesn’t mean anything.”
I looked at Rutty. His face sank, and he sighed. He was a brave brother, but he did see it,
and he knew what I was going for. And
Rutty always told the truth. The truth was
one of the very last things we all had.
Besides, I didn’t even know what to do with it once I pulled it
out. There was no denying it. Especially when Halcyon Crew takes you to
task. They know better than all, because
they’re glued to those monitors 24-7, and they can spot a pixel flinch in a
drunken stupor.
“The city was crawling with gorgs, and you
knew that. You and Rut were supposed to
get your asses back here and not engage them. If that meant you had to stay in the cold and
stick it out one more night until they floated off to God knows where then that
was what you should have done! I
don’t give one shit if that requires you to stay out seventeen more days,
Jet!”
“Captain, I don’t even know what it
does. Markus didn’t say a word. He just bolted.”
“I don’t care, Sergeant! The point is that you’re still a loose
cannon, and you think you know better than all the rest of us what to do in a
pinch.”
I sighed.
Whatever. I could see the amulet
in the next room, and Harrison and DuPre poring over it like some newfound
treasure, their greedy grubby little hands pawing at it. They were practically salivating. The two of them had literally snatched both
pieces right out of our hands a few seconds after we had crossed the threshold,
without even asking if we were okay. I sighed.
“Yep, you got it. You’re right.
I’m just a loose cannon. You’re absolutely right.”
Captain Stone – “Stoney” to close friends and
compatriots - bristled and sighed out of his nose. He crossed his arms. I gave him a few seconds. But then I could see the smile creep into the
corner of his mouth, and his crossed arms betrayed his true sentiments. He couldn’t hide that he was glad to see I’d
made it after all.
“Cameron,” he began, using my real name
instead of my callsign, and shaking his head.
Jerk. No one calls me that.
They called me “Jet” ever since I outran a senior officer at age 15. But
Rutty was faster than me; they should have called him that. He just never got the chance, I guess. “You
never cease to amaze me.” He took a few
steps closer, until I could feel the hot breath coming out of his nose as he
laughed. “Glad you’re back home, son.”
“You too, dad. Don’t call me Cameron.” I smiled.
My “dad” was a high-ranking Captain, almost a
Colonel, and he maintained order, but he did love his kids. I knew he loved me, even though I wasn’t
really his: he had adopted me after, well, after everything went down. And I also knew that he wanted to keep
whatever this thing was safe, and figure out how we can use it against the
gorgons. Letting him down was the last
thing I would want to do. And deep down,
he knew I was a fighter.
The Captain looked me up and down. “Welcome back, Jet.”
“Thanks, dad.”
“Get outta here.”
“Sir, yes sir.”
Captain Stone play-slugged me in the shoulder,
and I turned to Rutty and winked. All clear. We walked out together and
snickered. The Captain turned back to
face Harrison and DuPre in the next room.
His smile faded as he watched whatever it was in there, pinning his
hopes onto it, and sighing once more.
After all, it was that or nothing.
“Man,
you’re so lucky dad is a softie.”
“Dude, he ain’t no softie. There’s just too few of us left to be mad
at. And he isn’t our dad.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Rut took a huge messy bite out of the candy
bar that he had stowed away. Can’t
remember where he had found it, but it was on the way home. Completely unopened too, and that’s a rare
surprise. Said “100 Grand” on it, and
that one was a new one for me.
“What kind is that anyway?” I asked, pawing
at the wrapper. “100 Grand? What is that?”
“Oh man, you’ve never had one of these? They’re gooood. Too good to share, if that’s what you’re
thinking.” Rut pulled his hand away,
resource guarding like a mutt. But just
as swiftly his expression changed. “Nah,
just jokin.’ Have a bite.”
I wiped away his disgusting spittle from the
edge of where he’d gnawed off a chunk, sniffed at it suspiciously, and then
exacted a meek portion of it for inspection.
Wow that’s good, I thought.
I could taste the crisped rice, and a flood of memories came back to me
from when I had had my last Whatchamacallit: a bit stale but still sweet
and somewhat crunchy. “Whoa, that is
really good.” Before he could intervene,
I stole an actual bite-sized bite.
“Hey!
Get your own, butthead.”
We snorted.
I loved Rutty: he was half compatriot, half punk, and that’s a good
balance. He was four years my junior, so
I always felt like I had to take care of him, but he didn’t need it. Rut was awfully good at getting himself out
of (and into) trouble. And he was great
company. Of all the partners I’ve cycled
through – had to, as the gorgons picked off the rest – he was seriously the
best, and not just because he was my baby brother. I never thought I’d consider him as an
upgrade from the ones before, God rest their souls. But I loved him crazily. He had this incomparable swagger to him, and
this overly mature confidence that made you love him or revile him. I picked the first one. After all, I had been told more than once
that I was quite swaggerly myself… so Rut and I were more or less two peas in a
pod. And no matter how you sliced it, he
was the last surviving part of my family with me, and that made for an
inseparable bond.
We had been through a lot together in the
last six months, and we had had some close shaves. Rutty had kind of a paint-by-numbers
approach, which is why him grabbing that candy bar utterly surprised me…he didn’t
even wipe it down. But hunger does that
to you, and we were hungry on that patrol.
We walked down the corridor and rounded the
corner past the giant hum of the data room with its warm drafts baking us as we
approached. A small gust made my hair
flick back as I turned to look in.
There it was.
The Beast. It was always running,
computing possible scenarios, number-crunching, analyzing, trying to find a way
past the Sentinels at the ocean shore.
Whatever it was they were guarding out there, we just could never seem
to get a clean look. Whatever drone we
launched, no matter how high up, the enemy flew higher. After all, they came from up there. Satellites over the ocean were disabled, so
aerial recon was impossible. Whatever mission we launched, no matter how
clandestine, to figure out why it was they wanted us to stay here so far
inland, was lost on us. But the Beast
would figure it out. It had to figure it
out. This thing was powerful, and it had
been fed so many AI computational algorithms, it might just figure it out and
then decide to destroy us all. We’ll
see.
Whatever web archives it could salvage and
rummage through, it would do so, day and night.
The satellite data they fed into that thing, the loads of wiki garbage,
presumably meaningless to us, needles in haystacks, were fodder for
investigation. Previous aerial
reconnaissance before they came, geothermal scans, activity history, maritime
routes, deep dives, offshore drilling, transportation, commerce, coastal
patrols, incidents, accidents, sunken vessels, tide patterns, underwater
venting, cable routes, trade zones, international borders, all of it:
constantly pumping through those cores, a trillion bits of minutiae crossing
over and under each other in its highways and byways, and us, silently
waiting…and hoping. It was long since we
really had any tangible hope.
It was warm in the data room, and it was warm
outside the Blockade. It was warm everywhere from the heat of battle and loss.
Rut hit his bunker, flashed me a peace sign
with one hand, and playfully slugged me in the shoulder with the other. “See ya, bro,” I winked, and kept on walking.
I hit my own bunker forty feet down the hall
and around the bend. Block 237. In the Blockade, it was easy to get lost, but
as we were part of patrol, they liked to move us around and keep the fittest
runners closest to the front doors, so that we didn’t have far to go to rest –
or perhaps it was so that we didn’t have to go far to report. The numbers started on the right side and ran
counterclockwise around to the left, climbing higher. Mine was 237.
Rutty’s was 218. It was well on half a mile from the front door to The
Mound at the opposite end. All that
garbage out there made the mound one helluva stink, so no complaints from me about
being positioned far from it. And when
runners came in, you’d always get a whiff of fresh air once again through the
front gate…if it were a strong enough gust to make it past the heat of The
Beast, that is.
We’d been in here a while.
I unslung my pack and hoisted it on the
hanger on the wall, and then peeled off my boots with a grunt of relief and
comfort. “Hey mom,” I pensively greeted
as I did so. “Hey dad. Hey sis.
I’m back.” I stared at their
empty bunks.
I don’t know why I always do that. Their bunks would never be inhabited
again. At least not by them – nor
me. Didn’t matter if I really needed to
stretch out or if I had Rutty over.
Sleeping in their bunks meant that they weren’t coming back, and I
wasn’t ready to acknowledge that to anyone, much less myself. When Rutty slept over, he stayed in my bunk
and I slept on the floor, inhaling my reeking boots… but preserving their
memories in honor. I’ll take the stench
over forgetting any day. Plus,
having him over was like having a little bit of a home again. I can’t remember much of that time
anymore. I wish that I could. War and tension do that to you.
I gave their bunks one last reverent look and
then turned over on my side, facing away. I needed sleep. But my eyes wouldn’t close.
• • • • •
I remember when the gorgons first arrived in
2026. Admittedly, we were all enthralled.
I was too. Sis was especially
enthralled. Somebody in Guatemala
spotted the first one, if I remember correctly.
It just came drifting down, straight out of the sky, near sunset: so
humanoid, and yet enshrouded in mist. They
had angelic qualities to them. Some of
us wondered if they were messengers from God.
Their bodies were cloaked in that blueish-green vapor. It was really creepy, but for whatever reason
it’s the creepy things that draw us in the most. We just can’t look away, like a moth to a
flame.
Then there was another. And another.
And five more. And then
more. And then twenty more. Fifty.
Four hundred. More kept coming,
just slowing down to a geostationary orbit fifty feet above the ground all over
the earth.
The
dogs were perpetually screaming and howling; some of their ears were reportedly
even bleeding. They were running mad, whining and cowering in terror, fleeing
to dark corners with their tails between their legs.
I was only seven then. Rutty was just three. Sissy was six.
But I remember it all.
In the sixteen years since then, they laid
waste to pretty much everything, except the Blockades of course. Oh, they knew where we all were, and they
didn’t like it when we ventured out, for any reason. They got especially hot if they saw any of us
heading in any direction that even remotely resembled going toward a
coastline. No matter the continent, they
wanted us pigeonholed far inland. We
could never figure out why. Some
straggled around by day still, but all we knew concretely was that they mostly reappeared
every evening, near dusk. Where they all
largely disappeared to during the day no one ever really knew. Apparently, they didn’t like sunlight, and
they would almost entirely vanish for a month on end during the summertime when
it got into the high eighties and nineties. Those were our reprieves. It was times like
that that we actually praised all the ozoners that went before us:
inconsiderate humans with their carbon emissions, fossil fuels, aerosols and
CFCs; they didn’t know it, but they were actually helping us. Warming up the planet. Making the atmosphere hotter and hotter: more
inhospitable to not just us, but them as well.
I heard recently that a team of guys actually wrangled a gorgon in the
heat of summer, while wearing some kind of protective eye shields, and they
stripped it down: it just flailed, writhed, and screamed as it baked in the hot
summer sun. Sizzled and smoked
even. Apparently, they had some vampiric
traits too. Never found out any more
about it because you can’t trust all stories, and I for one don’t plan to
wrangle any gorgon to see if it tries to suck blood too.
I remember the first time I saw one for
myself. Back then they weren’t really
evil to behold; they just had this sort of ethereal quality to them, angelic
almost, and they just sat there and hummed.
Floated. We tried to make contact with them, of course; but they never
moved. For two months they just stayed
there, as more and more of them slowly floated down. Taking up positions. We all got uneasy, of
course, because what the hell were they?
Why were they here? Where did
they come from? What did they want? All
those questions piling up stunk more than The Mound, frankly.
But then, we got our answers, sure
enough. Whether through some kind of
telepathy, or some primitive form of timing, they all began to move. One by
one, they clicked on, like a countdown had finished or a switch had been
flipped.
And that’s when they started hunting us
down. Nothing we did mattered. Hiding was of little use. Shooting at them only made them move angrier,
and they’d get faster. And that
high-pitched shriek and dropped jaw thing.
Lord. I remember a man kept
shooting and shooting at one perched on the corner of a pretty tall building –
I think he had a sniper rifle – but with each shot the gorgon hurtled downward
faster and faster, until both it and the man disappeared in a thunderous
cataclysm of concrete and dust. The
gorgon was the only one that came out of that pit, a little fatter than it had
been before it smashed down.
There were thousands of them in the air,
swooping in all directions. Airplanes
were overwhelmed and thrown out of the sky.
It was pandemonium to the power of frenzy, to the power of chaos. The earth was upended on that day, and in the
days following. The military had no time
to mobilize… these things were everywhere: those poor souls who had to man
helicopter gunships: they didn’t stand a chance. And then the news once reported that a swarm
of them passed – passed, mind you – an F-35 jet on patrol. Frozen pilots plunged into the sea…the
ground…the history books. All our hopes
went up in blazes of glory. There were so
many jets and commercial airliners at the bottom of the ocean now.
Each nation responded in whatever way they
felt they should. There was no consensus
in the United Nations, because there was never time or safety in order to
mobilize a gathering: and many world leaders were already filling the bellies
of the gorgons anyway. North Korea shot
missiles in vain; thankfully, their nukes were intercepted before they killed
us all while trying to mount a meager but impotent counterattack. Iran was the
same.
The saddest part of it was the Gaza war just a
few years prior. The Israelis and
Palestinians had never quite afforded each other full truce; they would throw
one another at a gorgon if it meant they would escape with their lives. Traps were set by one side or the other to
lure in gorgons and devour whole households of their enemies. Despicable. Same with Ukraine and
Russia. People desperate to sabotage
their fellow humans just to get a few paces ahead. But the gorgons were faster than all of us.
The subject of nukes was never off the table…
there was just no one who could get them mobilized, and where were they even
supposed to detonate one? The chances of
the entire human race getting wiped out by friendly fire were all too high.
Everyone everywhere was impacted. Every nation had thousands of them flying
around. Those that could shelter in
place could find out a little bit here and there on the news, but eventually there
was no central news, and nothing to find out what was happening at other
outposts. No CNN, no MSNBC, no news
sites…I mean, they were there, but none of them were updated. VPN’s hosted phantom sites that were frozen
in time years back with no updated content.
Their content and IT departments had been eaten.
The gorgons just caught, froze, and ate us,
one by one. Rinse and repeat, in a
grisly shower of cataclysm.
In a few years, eighty-five percent of the
world’s population was gone. The
survivors lingered where they could, flitting from place to place, eking out a
life of survival amidst the shadows. Since that time, the earth became a ghost
town, abandoned, with overgrown ivy and out of control moss. Mildew and
weeds. Vehicles everywhere, abandoned in
mid-transit. Crashed airplanes. Trains off their tracks.
Animals roamed the streets freely after a
while, escaping their enclosures. Most
were picked off right there in their zoos. Even the king of the jungle was
eviscerated by a single gorgon. Cheetahs
couldn’t outrun them.
Sure, automated systems still ran: sprinklers,
night lights, ac systems, etc. We still
had power and utilities; just no humans to routinely man them, so, eventually,
several systems failed. Fuel rods in some nuclear reactors, unattended to by
human intervention, heated out of control; in some countries they failed, and
the prevailing winds from radiation killed off many of the survivors over time
as well. At least the radiation got some
gorgons with that too, though.
Electricity went out over whole swaths of the
earth for some survivors; then hypothermia and disease did the rest. We figured the gorgons killed off eighty
percent of us almost straightaway; then, the ensuing natural calamities got another
roughly five percent after that.
Someone was still creeping around and running
things where and when they could. Independent
heroes or troops ventured bravely into dangerous territory to keep things
running, or to jumpstart failed hydroelectric, solar systems or power plants. Clandestine operations were springing up all
the time all over the globe, desperate to keep us running.
Those with nursing or doctoral backgrounds
stemmed the tide somewhat, but they had to learn fast. We weren’t lacking in medical supplies, as
long as we could conduct a raid on a hospital or clinic; it was just ramping up
quick education to those who could actually wield them.
But for the most part, it was like trying to
pour a cup of cold water on a raging inferno.
Eventually, we would lose. Earth became
unoccupied and barren, a desolate wasteland of lifeless quiet and a graveyard
of ominous vacancy – except for them.
Once a gorgon had you in their sights…you
just froze. At first, we thought it was
just out of primal fear or terror. But
no: there was actually something emanating from them that paralyzed the viewer:
at first, we thought it was some chemical agent, energy transference or
something like that that seemed to be taking place. We had scientists working on it. That’s why we called them gorgons: the power
they had to literally stick you to the ground right where you were, and you
couldn’t move, and then they could float over and have their way with you, all
the while whispering with that spine-chilling hiss: the sound of countless
breaths of voices mingled together in wordless agony. I don’t know which is worse: knowing that you
can’t run, or being eaten alive while you can’t even scream. I remember the little girl though: she was
about my age, and I could tell she was crying while that gorgon ate her. She definitely felt it. All of it.
Sometimes they wouldn’t even need to paralyze
you; they’d simply catch up with you, whisking behind you as you fled for your
life: like me today just before the Blockade.
They were just fast. Some
people closed their eyes as they fought back, once we learned of their
paralysis method. But that was pretty
futile; you were just shadowboxing, swinging at nothing. One way or another, they would get you, and
the best you could do was just to hide and ride it out and for God’s sake, be
quiet. One of them was just as bad as a
swarm of them.
The most unnerving thing? You just don’t think of humans as a food
source. We have memories, souls,
history, purpose. We aren’t just some
wild gazelle or antelope out on the Serengeti: we aren’t just some prey. When you eat a human, you destroy purpose,
memories, sanctity, and life. It was an
abominable act. But of course, gorgons don’t know any of that. They’re just predators like any other shark
or cheetah or hyena.
A gorgon was no respecter of persons.
I shivered and turned over, pulling a thin,
ratty blanket up over me. It felt like a
scratchy Brillo pad, but it was something, at least.
You know that point where your body craves
sleep, and you know that you need it, but your eyes just won’t stay
closed? Yeah. That’s where I was. For sixteen long years we’ve lived under the
shadow of these things: wishing to high heaven that they’d just go, and hoping to
hell that they wouldn’t find us out in the wild out there. Our world had been forever changed. My life had been forever changed.
I was one of the “lucky” ones who happened to
be born at the right time in history so as to witness all of this, to live it
out, and to have to accept it as just how life was. The ones who came after me – and there
weren’t many, because why would you? – would never know what it was like to see
them all drift down out of the sky. To
hear them all suddenly start to move into action as if a switch had flipped: it
was the switch that was labeled “annihilation of man.” To actually watch one of them eating one of
us whole. To hear that bone-chilling
slimy hiss. You don’t ever forget that
sound. These babies were lucky enough to
be born inside the Blockade, and to be kept far in, near the center, away from
the threat that for them lingered only on the edge of legends and myth. But if they could sleep in peace because of
our tireless labor? Fine with me. Ignorance is truly bliss.
However, it wasn’t a myth for me.
Losing my family wasn’t a myth.
That cat today wasn’t a myth.
The amulet wasn’t a myth.
The amulet – even now I wondered what they
were doing with it…but more so I wondered what it would do for us. What would Stoney do with it? Where were the rest of them? What would the
Beast reveal? It was unearthly, to be
sure, and they had found a few of them before, but only recently had scientists
discovered that they arrived at the same time the gorgons did. There had to be some kind of tie-in. At least, that’s what we all seemed to now be
pinning our hopes to.
With these and a million more questions
pouring through my mind, somehow, I was able to fall asleep, though I don’t
know when, as it was pretty fitful. The
room hummed with an unearthly rigor, the sound of countless engines throbbing
throughout the Blockade. I was uneasy.
There was no way we were going to make
it. That was our reality.
About the Author
Aaron Ryan lives in Washington with his wife and two sons, along with Macy the dog, Winston the cat, and Merry & Pippin, the finches.
He is the author of the “Dissonance” series, several business books on multimedia production penned under a pseudonym, as well as a previous fictional novel, “The Omega Room.”
When he was in second grade, he was tasked with writing a creative assignment: a fictional book. And thus, “The Electric Boy” was born: a simple novella full of intrigue, fantasy, and 7-year-old wits that electrified Aaron’s desire to write. From that point forward, Aaron evolved into a creative soul that desired to create.
He enjoys the arts, media, music, performing, poetry, and being a daddy. In his lifetime he has been an author, voiceover artist, wedding videographer, stage performer, musician, producer, rock/pop artist, executive assistant, service manager, paperboy, CSR, poet, tech support, worship leader, and more. The diversity of his life experiences gives him a unique approach to business, life, ministry, faith, and entertainment.
Aaron’s favorite author by far is J.R.R. Tolkien, but he also enjoys Suzanne Collins, James S.A. Corey, Marie Lu, Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, and Stephen King.
Aaron has always had a passion for storytelling.
Aaron is the admin of the Authors & Writers Only group on Facebook.
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