- Before -

There wasn't time to respond, not in between our awe and terror. We'd been messing around at the park, all of us were there. Me, Gwen my younger sister, Jace with his football and his girlfriend Haley (both equally important to him, or so he jokes). Tommy showed up wearing his new cowboy boots and Danny thought we were going to play disc golf with him for once. Ricky had to bring his baby sister Lizeth with him and Justin was upset we couldn't do anything fun with Ricky's sister around since she was only 6, but Samantha got him to calm down once she started talking to him. Even Max showed up, who usually only hung around the gym with Jace, but decided to hang out with us today. That was our group on the day the concrete ate the Earth.

I was tossing a football around with Jace and Max, the girls were playing with Lizzie, and the other guys were talking about games when we heard a deep, guttural rumble beneath us. I yelled at everyone to get under the tables, thinking it was an earthquake, but I was wrong. The road itself started convulsing, with waves of cement traveling through the streets. It looked like veins pumping blood. Soon we saw the parking lot and driveways attached to nearby houses start slinking into the road, mixing the gravel and pavement with the asphalt and cement. Houses started shuddering and shaking as their foundations were ripped out from under them. The pavilion we were all huddled on started to shift beneath our feet and we started sliding in, but Jace, Max and I pushed everyone out onto the dirt, which still seemed stable. We watched as the entire pavilion started moving toward the road, slithering almost like a snake. In the distance, a large gray wall started growing. I couldn't tell how far away it was but it seemed massive, towering over our neighborhood. Soon we saw more walls forming, all around us, until they started shifting and moving closer together, only to collide into themselves, constructing an ever growing vertical slab of brutalism. The walls came from all over and finally, as all the concrete and cement vanished into the distance, the huge one shuddered to a stop. We all started checking our phones to find out what happened but our services were shut off, houses laid in shambles around us, telephone wires cut in half by the shuffling walls, cell towers toppled and the larger building in the city were collapsing, if not entirely gone already. We could hear vehicles around us crashing into each other, overturned by the waves in the road, tires losing grip on the dirt and brakes screeching. Lizzie started crying, telling us she was scared, when the large wall in the distance groaned loudly and exploded out into streams of concrete. They shot forward and joined other streams of cement from other monolithic walls around us. They pulled themselves together and went taut, like rope, quickly covering most of the sky. Waterfall-like streams of rubble and cement started flowing down into the ground and, as they made contact, started shaking the ground, like they were digging into the dirt. Sammy screamed and pointed up where we saw one of these cascading streams coming down right on top of us. We started running, Max picking up Lizzie so she wouldn't be left behind. I cleared the area the stream was going to come down onto and I looked back to check on my friends. Another rumble jolted through my legs as a separate pillar hit the ground somewhere else. It was enough to make Ricky trip onto his front as everyone cleared the area after me. Jace and I ran to grab him but the brutalist pillar hit the ground right then, squashing the bottom half of Ricky's body. The deep gray of the pillar stained with bright red and Jace and I were splattered with Ricky's blood. Everyone was shocked and Lizzie started screaming as Max turned her head away from the scene. Ricky's mouth gurgled blood and vomit as his eyes started bulging and he reached forward, desperate for help we couldn't give him. his arm dropped to the ground and his skin grew pale. More pillars crashed into the ground as all of us continued to stare in shock. The rumbling ground died down as the pillars stopped dropping down. All was quiet for a moment before suddenly, a small section of the wall, right where Ricky's body laid, slid open, revealing stairs heading up and down, wrapping around the hollow inside of the pillar. The air was still, no breeze would blow with the sky being occupied by the behemoth that now resided there.

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- Now -

It's been months since then. Lizzie hasn't talked since her brother died, but at least she's not crying anymore. I grasp the top edge of a large cement cube, the rough edge pushing rubble into my palms. The skin on my hands have turned raw from so much climbing. I turn around and reach my hand down over the edge, back towards my group. Daniel grabbed my hand and I hoisted him up. Next, Max handed me Lizzie and clambered up himself, where we each grabbed Jace's hands and hauled him up as well. We lifted everyone up one by one until all of us were on the same platform. The opposite edge overlooked a vast chasm, so deep all we could see was the darkened fog at the bottom. After the Cement washed over Earth we were left alone, at least for the most part. At one point before hand we had a spat with some other survivors but that was a long while ago. Sticking out of the cliffside, heading down into the abyss, was a set of stairs, jutting out of the wall. Each step was only a few inches out of the wall, smooth cut like they had been placed like that. "That's not enough clearance for most of us," I pointed out the steps. "We'll have to find another way down." "Why are we even trying to go down there?" Justin pipes up, "It's not like anything will be down there anyway." He gives an exasperated sigh, knowing what's coming next. "Because," Gwen starts up, "nobody believed Danny about the Wardens, an now Tommy is gone. If Daniel says he saw a fire down there, we have to believe him this time." We all fall silent as we remember what happened to Tommy. "I promise I saw a campfire down there, and I heard people talking too. Trust me." Daniel states, exasperated and sounding desperate. "Fine, fine. That doesn't change the fact that there's no way down there." Justin says as he walks away and jumps off the cube. Jace mutters "Liz can fit," under his breath. I grab him by the collar and push him towards the edge. "After the shit you pulled, why don't you go check it out for us the quick way?" His feet barely hanging onto the edge and my hand holding his shirt being the only things stopping him from tumbling back into the void. He lifts his hands up, "Woah, woah I'm not saying she should go, just that she'd fit! Chill out man, fuck." Haley lays her hand on my shoulder and as I turn to look at her she shakes her head negatively. "Fine," I pull him back onto sure footing and I let go of his shirt, his collar now crumpled where I yanked him. "Thanks, Hale," he says sheepishly. "I still don't want anything to do with you, asshole." She retorts. We all hop off the structure, setting our feet on the ground with a thud and pushing dust out from around shoes as we land. A deep groan begins and the complex begins rumbling, so Max picks up Liz, and all of us run off to find a safe spot to wait out realignment. As we sprint down the halls, they begin to shift. Concrete scrapes against concrete and rubble falls down around us. I squint my eyes to stop the dirt and gravel from getting in my eyes. A wall suddenly erupts in front of us so we stop and turn back. Running back towards we came from we see the cube we'd been standing on start to crack and a soft glow emanate from inside. "That's what it looked like, the thing that took Tommy!" Daniel yelled at us over the sound of the cement groaning and clashing. He took off to the right, swinging his arm behind him to make us follow. After we turned to the right we saw a hole marking the end of the hallway and we all sped up to get inside it. We jump through, falling several feet to the floor of this room. We huddle up in the middle, closing our eyes and waiting for the groaning to stop. After it died down I look around, taking in this new room we found ourselves in.