The invaders outside Javier’s bar were only a small portion of a larger group.

Pilot turned left at the intersection, stumbling upon a scene that made him wonder if the Apocalypse had ever ended. More than half of Ourense was ablaze, from the main square to the Minho River where he’d entered the city. Plumes of grey and black smoke rose into the night, disappearing once it escaped the light of the flames. Small groups of injured and scared people ran past him. They were going the other way.

Away from the nursery. Towards safety.

He cursed the old man for reminding him of the place. It would be so simple to turn around and follow the frightened people. He could go straight back to the pine forest — in fact, it would be relatively easy to loop back there. He could find some more squirrels and practice using his Power, perhaps graduating from small rodents to something that would fill his belly a little more.

Instead, he ran to the nursery. The cobblestones slapped beneath his bare feet; their cold touch gradually replaced by spreading heat. People looked at him like he was mental, but no one stopped him. It was every man for himself.

Buildings flashed by. A tabby cat went skittering across the street. Annie nearly bounded off his shoulder trying to make chase. He had no idea that the old man led him so far into the depths of Ourense. The nursery should’ve been just past the intersection, not deep behind enemy lines like he was now.

In the end, he nearly missed it. Approaching from the east, he’d run across the entire face of the building before realising that the ruined portion on the west side looked eerily familiar. The city square and the broken fountain lay to his left. There were a pack of invaders dancing around the fountain like a deranged performance of Ring Around the Rosy. They dragged furniture from homes and set it alight, crisscrossing the square with a grid of fire.

Pilot didn’t have time for the manic lights display. Even from outside the building, he could hear children howling. He dropped Annie in a darkened corner and told her to stay, though he wasn’t sure that she would. He pelted up to the second floor, simply scaling the crumbled ruins and entering through a broken wall. The cries were still another floor above him. He crashed through a cream-white door, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and wondering why on earth someone would have locked it. Finding the staircase, he bolted up three at a time, the orange light of his Gem leaking through his shirt and flashing like a strobe light.

The dormitory wasn’t pretty. One of the caretakers lay face down on the floor with her arm at a weird angle. There was a charred foot laying on one of the pillows, its owner nowhere to be found. At the far end of the sleeping quarters, a small pack of children huddled in the corner. Two caretakers were defending them from an invader.

Pilot was late.

As he took it all in, the invader’s right fist twisted and melded into a jet-black blade. With a snarl, the man thrust his arm forward, puncturing through the tabletop that one of the caretakers was shielding himself with. The caretaker shouted in pain as the blade pierced his chest. He dropped the makeshift shield, dragging down the invader’s arm and ripping open his own wound. The children wailed.

Pilot tore a pole from one of the bedframes and advanced on the invader. It was less than ten metres, but in the dark he could barely see where he was walking. The head of a teddy bear snuck under his foot and he slipped, nearly falling.

It was enough to alert the invader.

Hemmed in on both sides by people willing to fight, the man jabbed his sharpened fist once, feinting at the remaining caretaker, then spun around and charged.

As the man came within striking distance, Pilot darted into the thin gap between two beds. The bed pole had more reach, but compared to the man’s body-morphed weapon, it was suffering in manoeuvrability. The sharpened arm darted forward in quick punches, completely unfazed by Pilot slamming the pole into the man’s ribs.

Pilot scrambled onto the hard mattress and rolled across towards the kids and caretaker. The invader lunged forward, leaping onto the mattress and jabbing down at his opponent. Pilot floundered back into the corridor through the beds, stepping back under a hail of blows that he barely dodged.

He slipped. Not on the same teddy, but instead a set of wooden building blocks. He sat down hard on his tailbone, wincing and rolling backwards. The invader pushed forward, standing over him. Pilot raised his legs in defence, ready to kick if he had to.

It wouldn’t work. That blade would carve him up. His foot would join the other one sitting over on the pillow.

The invader smiled and raised his arm. Pilot only watched the blade, noting the grotesque way it fused to the wielder’s skin. A vein of shimmering heat ran through the weapon.

Oh well. Second time in two days.

“Down, Pilot!” cried a new voice.

He was already lying on the ground, but he smashed his heels to the floor as well. The man’s arm lashed out, centimetres away from piercing Pilot’s gut when the caretaker’s sheet of wood flew over Pilot’s head and smashed into the invader. It catapulted him backwards, laying him out across the floor. Completely untethered, the board rose and fell, smashing into the man’s face and neck.

Stolen novel; please report.

After the first two strikes, he gurgled. After the fourth, mighty and crushing, he went silent.

Pilot let out a pent-up breath and groaned. When he looked up, he saw Lucia. She stood at the doorway with her hand raised, pointing at the piece of wood and the broken man.

“Lucia? You followed me?”

She stepped into the room and hopped over the attacker’s body. His arm had turned back to normal human skin. She offered Pilot a shaking hand and hauled him to his feet.

“Hi, Pilot. No, I didn’t follow you. You got lucky. Help me with him.”

Together, they pulled up the shocked caretaker. The man was blubbering and gushing fifty things at once, none of them discernible. After calming him down, Lucia went to her knees and picked up the youngest child. He couldn’t have been any older than three. When she hoisted him onto her shoulder, he didn’t say a single word or make any noise.

Lucia turned to Pilot. “This is Benson. He’s my son.”

**************

Penny Alfwather was getting ready for supper when the asteroid hit. Her tea was steeped (she liked the Australian Breakfast flavour but would never admit it to her fellow New Zealanders) and a small portion of lemon slice sat on a flowery saucer. Her daughter bought it for her last October. She wouldn’t see her again.

It was a cloudless night, bright enough to see all the way across Island Park Reserve to the low dunes of Blackhead Surf Beach. There were small figures out there, young couples willing to throw away their inhibitions and clothing in preference of enjoying their last moments just as God made them.

Penny gazed at the band of youngsters, feeling sorry for the flamboyant bunch. She’d lived enough years that this event, though unfortunate, would not rob her of too much time.

“The Golden Years,” she murmured. She hated that term. Her husband, Robert, used to say that the only golden part about it was the results of a clumsy bladder. Penny would tell him off and say that he needed to drink more fluids.

Thus, her tea. Practice what you preach.

After watching the young ones for a while longer, she decided to enjoy at least a sip of her drink before it happened. She was surprised when the wall of flame seemed to envelope her home from all directions. Her understanding of astronomy and physics — though incomplete and far deferential to her interest in geology — told her that the flames should’ve died out at around two thousand kilometres from the point of impact.

It was supposed to be tsunamis and earthquakes that destroyed New Zealand.

The scientists said so.

*

Then she was awake. She lay flat on the glass coffee table in her living room, draped over its cold surface like a patient on an operating table. The roof of her house rose far above her. She could see straight through the ceiling of the first floor, right up to the charred remains of the second.

A lady’s voice spoke to her, advising her of something called a ‘Power’. It assured her that the purple light coming from her chest was normal — a good thing, even. The Gem that was now her heart supposedly generated a specific type of energy, one that would allow her to use her new gift.

‘Earth-Moving’, it was called. She briefly wondered why the hyphenation was necessary. The voice wouldn’t tell her.

Penny got a bit fed-up after that. She left the ruins of her house and strolled around the side to the lean-to. Here, she would demonstrate to the lady in her head that humanity had already invented miraculous things for earthmoving called ‘shovels’ and ‘wheelbarrows’.

But her trusty shovel was gone. Her rake, too, at least the metal one was. They might’ve been obliterated or blown away in the Armageddon, but it was rather curious. Far flimsier tools sat right in their usual spots, only slightly worse for wear.

I wonder how those skinny-dippers fared.

Somewhere in the last God-knows-how-long, she’d become one of them. There was not a single scrap of clothing on her, but luckily (for both Penny and the potential observer) no one was around to notice.

Dunedin was silent.

In a state of shock, Penny went through the motions of everyday life as best she could. She rummaged through her closet (thank God her bedroom was on the bottom floor). She selected some warm clothing that wasn’t completely ruined and got dressed. She brushed her teeth and went to put on makeup before wondering exactly why it was worth doing so. None of this was right, but it wasn’t on her to pick up the pieces, was it?

She went outside. Weeds had sprung up all over her garden like the little devils they are. She took a peek at her neighbour’s houses. One Door Down was quiet and still. Same with One Door Up.

Is it really just me?

With mismatched sandals on her feet, Penny tottered down the road. She looked in mailboxes, rang doorbells, and made small noises of disappointment when she noticed a particular glorious garden that had been decimated. Eventually, she thought she might go to the beach, where those people were.

Maybe. Just maybe.

It was less than two kilometres to the beach, and a pleasant walk at that. She flicked off her shoes when it got too sandy, happily relishing in the universal pleasure of having sand drift between her toes. It never got old.

About a kilometre into her journey, a hedgerow of native bushes bordering the path abruptly thinned. A large section of the Reserve sprawled out before her, all bushes and small trees and forgotten fencing. There were birds hopping around the place, branch to branch, the first evidence of animal life she had seen since waking up.

But all of that paled in comparison to the spike-like pillar in the middle of the clearing. At first it seemed to be made of marble, but it shimmered in a way that marble should not. The ground rose around it, cracked earth that looked more at home in a dry Australian desert than here on the sandy shores of the South Island.

And it was tall. At least fifteen meters. Maybe a third of that in width at its base where it burgeoned from the earth. She would’ve seen it earlier if not for the rows of houses, or the tall, thick hedgerows on the beach path.

Tentatively, Penny pushed through the disturbed bushes. Most of them were growing sideways. Their roots showed. The ground was lumpy, and the usual blanket of sand gave way to smooth, glossy rock. As she approached, a low hum travelled through the air and infiltrated her ears. It was constant and pervasive, and seemed to dull out the rustle of leaves and branches as she waded through.

At the base of the pillar, she held out a sandal and poked the structure. It was hard, and hot. She could feel a dull warmth emanating from a few metres away, and there was a melted spot where her sandal made contact, but the hand holding the sandal wasn’t too bothered. The air around the tower, only a few centimetres away, was much the same as the temperature three metres further.

She traced the perimeter. The spike was roughly the shape of a square-based pyramid, though the corners were rounded, giving the initial impression of a cone. On the side closest to the sea, she stopped and gasped at what she saw.

Carvings. Foreign letters, pictures and symbols covered the entire face of the structure, some of them inlaid with dazzling strips of glittering metal.

This gargantuan, humming obelisk was alive.