During the warmer months, the trees grow leaves, and this means that the forest can be pitch-black even under a clear sky with a full moon. The moon is not full tonight. Kanteen has a flashlight and is following my footsteps. I have a flashlight, too, but she doesn't need to know that.
"Are we getting close?" She asks.
"I think so," I tell her, trying to figure out how far we are from the cabin. "Hey, I think we got off on the wrong foot back there-"
"Please stop talking."
I grit my teeth. God, I miss Taiga.
If there's one thing I've learned in my months of studying about this new world, it's that I have no obligation to put up with this kind of person anymore. We're pretty far away from the rest of the group by now. I'm suddenly feeling like a gun is too quick and easy. I reach into my waistband and unsheathe a knife. She catches me looking into the distance and moves up. I grab the handle of the blade with both hands and jam it into her back. I'm guessing I missed her spine, since I no longer have my knife in my hands and the sound of running feet has entered the forest soundscape.
I pull out my shiny new suppressed pistol. Serves me right for going the distance.
"Guess they're coming back." I say in response to the sound of snapping branches.
"That was fast." Herra agrees.
Nothing happens.
"Nevermind, then… Hey, this is all a lot more exciting than I was expecting." I admit.
"It ain't normally like this." Freda admits. "I guess things are just falling apart."
"Sure feels like it." Herra grunts. "There's a war in Naharaim, more fighting in Illyria, this shit over here."
"Kush famine." Freda adds.
"Oh, there is?" Herra comments as we all look at Synne.
"Not that kush, sorry." She smirks. "The country's having a drought, I think. Shit happens."
Kanteen burst through the treeline some dozens of meters away. She could have been running faster, but one of her hands was holding her hip. "What is she-" Herra begins. The sound of a splintering tree rings out, again and again, and she trips and disappears into the dim grass. The hiker, Oski, follows close behind, smiling casually. He's holding something I can barely make out in the far darkness. He points it into the black void beneath him and that cracking sound fills our ears as a small ball of light briefly appears at the end of it.
It's a silenced pistol.
We all stand up. Herra shouts obscenities. Synne pulls out a snubnose revolver. The last coherent thought I have is to wonder when she picked that up considering she came straight from school.
The hiker keeps smiling with a gun pointed at him. He reaches into his jacket and pulls something off of his neck. He slithers and writhes as he stands there. His skin boils, falling off in reddish-pink chunks that bubble and steam on his clothes and on the tall grass. His face collapses as it slides off. What's beneath is incomprehensible. Its visage is too smooth and angular, its skin is exposed as if he just flayed himself alive. Those eyes carry a thousand generations of sheer malice despite being so small and beady.
Synne's hands are shaking so much that her gun rattles. She fires off five ear-piercing shots and keeps mashing the trigger. The creature throws itself onto the ground and shoots its pistol back at us. We all turn and run. Freda trips out of her chair but Herra grabs her by the collar of her shirt and pulls her upright,
We run through the house's back door into the kitchen. It's a glass door and has massive glass windows on either side, but we can at least draw the curtains. Footsteps fall hard and fast outside. "Freda! The landline!" Herra yells. Freda runs over to the phone on the wall and picks it up. Synne starts reloading her revolver one bullet at a time, her hands shaking so hard she takes multiple seconds to get each one into its hole. "Call the police!" Herra yells at the frozen Freda. She starts pushing buttons. The entire building falls silent as the electric lights cut off instantly. It's almost pitch-black in the weak moonlight.
He hit the circuit breaker. The circuit breaker in the garage. The garage which is connected directly to the kitchen.
The wooden door flies open and we all scramble out the other end as the thing opens fire again. The entryway has two options; up, and down. Freda and Synne leap down the stairs, but I overshoot and don't want to turn around and try again and keep sprinting. I pick a room in the upstairs hall and duck into it and see a large dresser and stuff myself into the giant upper space. Herra checks the closet on the opposite side of the room and closes the door before jamming herself besides me. With any luck, the closet is the hiding place he'll check first.
I pull out my cellphone. In the dark, I fumble to hit the right buttons, but it's second nature. The screen lights up and I curse and swear and hate whoever made the dial tone so loud.
"0-900, what's your emergency?" The polite dispatcher asks.
"Th-there's a-a-a killer l-loose in m-m-m-my house, I'm a-at t-t-three four four Derwood Lane, please, help, please, please…"
She takes a second to respond. "An officer is on the way. Find a hiding place and don't make any noise, but if possible, please stay on the line."
The house has four entrances, a front door in the entryway (where I am), a back door in the kitchen (where I just came from), the garage door (how I came in), and a side door in a utility closet downstairs where the washer and dryer are. Dropping from the second floor is a risky maneuver, and will make a lot of noise even if nothing breaks. So the ones who are most likely to get away are the two who I heard running downstairs. I wonder if they know the side entrance is there.
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The entryway is great because everything has to go through here. I crack a glowstick and watch as the room slowly turns red, knowing that nothing can go anywhere without passing me. I lay down on the ground, looking at the downstairs living room. I'm guessing that at least one of the two is hiding behind the couch on the far end, by the fireplace. Possibly both. I throw the glowstick down along with a rock. They tumble down the stairs and roll on the carpet. The one with the revolver, I'm guessing Synne, looks over the couch's back at the noise. She doesn't even see me up here. I take a moment to aim and fire. She falls like a puppet who just lost her strings. I wasn't expecting any of these disgusting things to have a gun, but luckily she wasn't very good with it.
I stand up and walk down calmly. The faint sound of chattering teeth jerks my view to the side just as I reach the bottom. There was a double-barreled shotgun in a case above the fireplace and the other one who ran downstairs is pointing it at my head. She's so small, but she's still an abomination and the red glow only makes her look more demonic.
I stare her down. "Freda, right?" I ask, smiling sadistically. "Didn't you wonder why the lock on the case was broken?"
Her entire body tenses up and she jerks the triggers. The hammers fall on empty chambers with loud metallic clicks. This is exactly why I unloaded it.
The monster is downstairs. He fired a few more shots and now screaming echoes through the entire house.
Freda has been down there, suffering, for over a minute. Sometimes she just cries. Sometimes she begs for help, or mercy, or death. Sometimes she quiets down, but then something happens and she starts pushing her vocal cords to the breaking point once again. It's driving me insane. Herra is covering her ears and trying not to cry. No comfort comes from the fact that the monster is down there and not up here.
Herra slowly opens the door to the cabinet and steps out. I grab her shoulder. In the faint moonlight the glint off of her eyes is the only thing I can make out. I hope that she can at least see how intently I'm glaring at her. She's so sad as she pulls away, but I don't dare get one iota out of this upright coffin to follow her. She stalks out of the room on a one-way mission to rescue her friend. I am alone. The screaming picks up again.
There's a loud thump, then the sound of someone being thrown into the wall, a thwack, a pained groan from something unknowable. Herra's winning. She's winning!
The thing hits the floor, and… fires. The fight continues for another few blows, but then some more silenced shots ring out. Then more, until the gun runs empty and the noise of the trigger is drowned out by the wail of the dying. That too ends, replaced by a revolting gurgling noise. Mechanical clicks are the last noise that I can make out before the entire building falls utterly silent. It's just me now. Everyone else is dead.
It takes all my strength to not hyperventilate.
I have no idea how much time passed since we hid here, or since the noises stopped. Instinct says over an hour. I can't think straight but even I know that's so fucking wrong, it ain't even been five minutes.
For a brief moment, through the crack in the cabinet door, I see the room experience weak splotches of crimson. Then it goes away. Drawers open and close in the adjacent room. It's coming. The light returns and a red glowstick rolls to a stop in the center of the carpet. The thing enters. My blood freezes in my veins and my heart stops beating. This close, only a meter or two away, I can see that it has a plumbing pipe held together with screws and welds strapped to the end of its gun.
What the fuck is this thing? Who the fuck gave it a silencer?
It doesn't see me as it scans the room, gun held close and tight to its chest. It turns from one side to the other and back again. Where there was abject terror, I finally realize that I might make it out of this alive, because the thing, that stupid fucker, is moving away from my cabinet and has a hand on the doors of the closet opposite me.
A way out instantly pulls itself together in my mind.
My legs are pushed to breaking as I leap from the cabinet with all my force. My first plows into the back of the monster's head and I feel the force's shockwave as it strains every joint in my arm. It collapses into the closet. I spin and dash for the window. My arms feel like they're pulling themselves apart as I grab the lip and pull it straight up, but the window doesn't budge. I try again, and again it stays still. I reach up and feel for the latches and flip them and try again. This time the window opens easily. As I'm crawling out, the creature has stood back up and fires at me. The first shot misses. The second one doesn't.
I land on the dirt with a crunch and stagger to my feet. My hand involuntarily places itself on my right side, where he shot me, which is fighting with my left ankle for which hurts more. I ignore it and try to run but even with my life on the line that damn ankle has limits. More bullets fly at me and two more plant themselves in my back. As I pass the stairs up the porch, I trip. I damn near have a heart attack as I look back and see the dead face of Kanteen, who crawled all the way over here and now stares back at me with glassy eyes and limp jaw.
I can't fathom trying to stand and I crawl on all fours. There are sirens in the distance. Around front, a cop car is pulling in, its lights becoming more visible against the grass. If I can just make it a few more meters, I can go around the garage and I'll be visible from the front of the house. I shout, partially out of pain, partially to make my salvation find me faster.
Just as I'm halfway past the corner, a crushing weight falls on me and my vocal cords shred themselves as I howl in pain. A deer in blue with her gun out comes around and sees me. "Oh, fuck!" She says.
I want to yell, "He's right behind me!" but no words can escape my mouth as the monster kicks me in one of my injuries again. The cop stops aiming down the sights of her pistol. No! No, you fucking moron! He's right here, just behind the corner! Fucking look! Don't put your fucking gun down! SHOOT HIM!
His heels grind into me and all I can do is sputter and wheeze and cry. Her partner doesn't have her back because there is no partner, only one policewoman arrived to try and save a half-dozen kids from a serial-killing monster. If I can only get one word, I might be able to survive, but she's right on me now, holstering her gun and getting ready to administer first aid. As she says something, she's cut off as she looks up. An unfathomable BOOM shakes the air and a shower of blood sprays out of her chest from both ends as she falls limp into the grass.
Through the haze of pain and unfathomable despair, I can faintly hear Kanteen in my mind going on one of her rants about police uselessness. I should have stayed home.
When I was born I didn't understand anything except the cold and the blazing brightness of the hospital room. My eyes open, or maybe they start seeing again, when something puts its hands on me. There are multiple deer, some in police clothes, some in doctor's scrubs, and a cacophony of sirens, a miasma of flashing lights. When I was three I had the worst birthday ever because I caught food poisoning and threw up cake on the table while everyone was singing. The world shakes as they roll me onto a stretcher and start carrying me. When I was five I fell out of a tree and couldn't breathe for ten seconds and thought I died but my mother explained to me what it meant to "have the wind knocked out of you". Nothing hurts and all of reality is a haze. The stars smear across the sky as I am jostled around. When I was eight I saw a homeless girl on the sidewalk and somehow knew I would never forget it.
The medics have left to get me to something. I don't know what. It won't work. When I was nine I was put in detention because I wanted to make a grilled cheese sandwich on the science lab hot plates and brought a butterknife to school so I could butter the bread to keep it soft under the heat. Most of these memories suck, but I guess it wasn't up to me what I remembered. Oh, well, it ain't like I regret them. When I was twelve Minno stole my lunch money so after school I hit her with a big stick and felt proud and terrified and she never did it again. I found out later that when her parents found out why she had been waylaid, they grounded her, and she realized what she did was wrong and didn't hold a grudge. At least the sirens are fading into meaningless noise so I don't have to think around them. When I was fourteen I bought a magazine with an artistically nude photoshoot of Mulea Sedo and for weeks I touched myself to the pictures of her and wondered if there was something wrong with me.
The headlights of the police car are so pretty. I want to stare at them for the rest of my life. When I was fifteen I went on a long rant to my best friend about how Axis was a shithead and she asked if I even liked men and had to walk me through the realization that I didn't. Some fat pig just walked in front of the spotlights in the blackness and interrupted the stream of natural beauty. When I was sixteen I saw the love of my life half-stripped and bloody and beaten and dead on a slab in a morgue.
The headlights are so bright, so pure. Maybe I'll finally get to tell Marigold I love her. I reach out my hand as the light begins to envelope my vision.