Timeline: Present
Point of View: Claudia & Ralph
Location: Earth (Ralph's Apartment)
As Earth came back into focus, Ralph and Claudia both could immediately tell that something wasn’t right. At first they couldn’t pin point what exactly it was, but as they settled back into place on Earth, as things came back into focus, they started to pick up on aspects of it that seemed wrong.
First was the silence. It was the middle of the day, but they couldn’t hear or see anyone. Ralph’s apartment building still stood before them, the street at their side, but there were no cars, no sounds of cars in the distance. There was no human chatter.
They looked at each other, then back out at the street. Claudia motioned toward the sidewalk where they could get a better vantage point, and Ralph nodded. They stepped out towards the sidewalk and stared out into the distance, Ralph to down the street to his left, Claudia down the street to her right.
Ralph didn’t see people or movement down his side. He did, however, see cars stopped in the middle of the road. Then he saw another vehicle, this time some kind of small-sized truck, crashed into the side of a building. The top of the vehicle was crunched, as if it had rolled. Or been stomped on.
Claudia, too, saw vehicles in the road or parked on the sidewalk where they should not have been. But Claudia could see something Ralph did not, because they glowed faintly with her vision. There were human bodies spread out on the side of buildings like peanut butter on toast. The glow was dull, but she could see the dying essence leaching out from the bodies like a smoke. The bodies didn’t fall, the gore long since dried, organs and intestines in a heap below the spread skins.
“Oh my God,” Claudia said.
“What?” Ralph asked. He turned to face Claudia's direction and didn’t see anything at first other than the parked cars. Then, as a chunk of one of the bodies' chest contents slipped to the ground, his eyes caught the movement. “What the fuck…” He said, then turned away, unable to look.
“They must be here already. The hive mind creatures, the giants.” Claudia said. “They must be opening portals between worlds. Did Ctaolthost mention that to you? That those of us with the ability can be used as portals between worlds?”
Ralph had his head between his knees, dry heaving. “He… must have forgotten to mention it.”
Claudia began walking down the sidewalk toward the closest body. Ralph looked up to see her walking, then shook his head and turned away, choosing to remain by the apartment building. He sat against the brick wall, sliding to the ground, his body tilted in a way that could not see. He knew he was slipping into a state of shock, but felt powerless to stop it. The hive mind had reached home so soon. How? And what did it mean? Did the silence mean everyone was dead? No, it couldn’t. It was too soon. Did everyone escape town, trying to outpace the creatures?
As Ralph’s mind descended into an unstable state, Claudia had reached the closest corpse. The head was a battered pulp of black hair, hanging loosely from the neck. The arms, too, were pulverized, the blood, fat, and skin combined into a kind of glue-like paste. The skin was unfolded and spread flat against the brick wall, the arches of the rib cages spread out and wide as if welcoming her to step inside the body.
Yet, she knew this was a dead portal and didn't lead anywhere. This body hadn’t had any power. She could tell by how the essence felt, the hazy remnants of it hovering off of the corpse, too little of it left to be of any gain to her. Ctaolthost had told her those with the power could be used to open doors between planets. She thought she remembered him saying “one-way”, meaning they could go to Earth, but not step back through. Yet, that didn’t make any sense. The day it had happened, the first creature had spread a human body inside that trailer court back in Colorado. The next day, more hive creatures poured out from the portal.
Had Ctaolthost lied to her?
She considered for a second that the red planet didn’t actually want to save Tegrex after all, that this was all some kind of war between two sentient planets, with Ctaolthost using humans as spies. But if that were the case, why would he, or it, give them the power he had? Why would he rebuild them to be stronger?
She stared at the drying human body, one that didn't share her power. Did the hive minds not know which humans could be made into portals, and which could not? Were they… killing every human they came across, spreading across the country like a plague throwing up bodies as they did with the hope that at least some would open gateways?
Claudia reached out and touched the body on the shoulder. As she did, it’s precarious hold against the building released, and it slipped to the ground like a thick blanket collapsing off the side of a couch. She looked further down the street, this time seeing another body spread out against a red minivan. It, too, was a dead portal. How had the creatures traveled here so quickly? She considered for a moment that she had been wrong about how the passage of time worked between the planets. Was it possible that time did pass at least a little more quickly while on the red planet?
Then she thought again about the silence, and about the bodies littered everywhere.
“Ralph!” She yelled. He didn’t respond. She turned to face the direction she’d come and found him rocking back and forth on the ground, head between his knees. She walked back to him. “Ralph,” she said again, firmly. She could hear that he was mumbling to himself, but she couldn’t tell what exactly he was saying.
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She kicked him in the head.
He fell over to the ground and looked up at her in surprise. He was giving her the wide-eyed look of a terrified child coping with an unbearable situation. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we should go inside. We don’t know if there are any more in the area.”
Ralph at first only looked at her stupidly (the patented Ralph look, but this time with a little fear mixed in), and then began nodding his head more aggressively than she felt the situation warranted. She reached down, handing him her palm. He took it and stood, his weight unsteady on his shaky, thin legs.
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When they got inside, Ralph stumbled through apartment towards his couch, then fell into it. He was staring at the television, thinking about where they’d left the remote before realizing that the television had never been turned off. He hadn’t heard the noise as he’d come in, and even now the sounds coming from it were hazy. He was outside of himself, hovering above his body, unsure was was happening. There was a ringing in his ears. On the television, there was only static.
“You hungry?” Claudia asked.
She had the fridge open and was palming sandwich meat in one hand. The meat chunk was pre-sliced, but she hadn’t bothered with that. She had the entire package in her fist, tearing bites from the slices in bulk.
“How can you…” Ralph started, but couldn’t finish. Yes, he had been hungry, and his throat was still parched, but after seeing those… bodies... He couldn’t bring himself to think about eating. The meat slices jiggled in Claudia's hand, and he began to dry heave again. There was nothing in his stomach to escape.
“Man, you’re gonna have to toughen up,” Claudia said, popping open a can of Mountain Dew and chugging it. She gulped it down and said, “Holy shit that’s good." Nothing hits like a cold pop after a long… day? Week? “Ralph, can you flip through the channels? Thankfully we still have power. There’s gotta be at least one channel still airing. One of the non-local channels at least. Get off this news one. Ralph? Oh, come on man,” she said when he hadn’t shifted. She set her meat wad down and approached, looking for the remote. When she found it, she started flipping through the channels, taking occasional sips of Dew. After ten channels, she still saw only static. “Dammit. I guess it doesn’t matter. Cable must be down completely.”
“Phone,” Ralph said, a zombie on the couch slowly waking up. “Check our phones. We should at least have a signal, right? That won’t go out for awhile.”
Claudia had to think for a minute about where she’d last seen her phone. Had she brought it with them to the red planet? No, she hadn’t, because she hadn’t intended to travel there. They’d gone outside to try and awaken Ralph’s power, only to find that his power was projection and teleportation. She glanced back into the kitchen and saw it sitting on the wireless charger she’d purchased. She stood to retrieve it. The charging light was still on, which made sense since the television still worked. How long until the power eventually went out? She picked up the phone.
She didn’t have any missed calls or texts, which made sense. She’d been missing for a long time prior to this, so didn’t expect anyone to bother reaching out to her. It still stung a bit, wondering why her parents hadn’t called. She remembered the burning house and the laughing, red face. For the first time in a really long time she had a longing to go see them, but that would have to wait.
She saw that she had two bars of service on her phone. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She didn’t know how cell phone service worked, and she wondered if the decline in service meant that some of the nearby cell towers were down. She returned to sit next to Ralph.
“What apps do you have?” Ralph asked.
“Not much. Facebook. Snapchat. What’s App. Mostly the messaging stuff.”
“Open Snapchat. Don’t say anything, just do it. Here, give me the phone,” he said impatiently, taking it from her before she could object. He opened the snap map, looking for the public snaps. He clicked on one nearby, posted a day earlier.
> The video began playing, and a young girl with blond hair, probably a high schooler, had her face full screen. Ralph could see that she’d been crying.
>
> “There’s one of them outside right now,” the girl said. She switched the camera to the back of the phone view and held the phone up to the window. She was sitting far from the window, so the picture wasn’t clear, but she zoomed in at least. Her heavy breathing and sobs became louder now. There was a distant rumble sound, and the phone shook in the girls hands. She started to cry lightly. Another distant rumble. It was hard to hear, but sounded as if the sounds were coming closer. It was impossible to see out of the girl’s window. It was night, the girl’s home dimly lit by a lamp.
>
> The view changed back to the girl. “Mom and dad are at work, and it’s just me here. They were supposed to be home hours ago. I don’t know what to do. Please, someone call for help. Please. I’m scared. Please.”
There was some more begging, and then the video ended.
Claudia recognized from the map that the video had originated from an apartment building down the road.
Ralph zoomed out the map. He zoomed out until he could see the whole state of Iowa, where they were, and then zoomed into Omaha, Nebraska. He clicked one of the red hot spots on the map.
This video was more frantic, posted 3 days ago. This surprised Ralph because he didn’t think they’d been on the other planet for that long. It had felt like a full day at most, hadn't even been long enough for a full cycle of the suns.
> The people in the video were running, the camera panning behind them occasionally as it swung with their strides. There was nothing there, but there were loud screeching sounds coming from the distance. It was again night, the only lighting coming from the street lamps as the group ran.
>
> “Go, go, go, don’t look back, go!” Spoke a frantic masculine voice. This one, too, sounded like a teenager, if not a little older. Possibly college.
>
> “Oh my God, Aiden. What was that thing.” This time the voice feminine. The camera, shaky as they ran, briefly panned to catch the side of her slender face and bright blue, terrified eyes, before panning back behind them.
>
> “I don’t know, baby,” Aiden said, “Jesus, it didn’t look like those things from Colorado.”
>
> The woman beside him screamed, and the camera swiftly turned back to the front of them. A creature stood before them, but this one was unlike anything either of them had seen yet. It had a massive blood-red worm-like body that wrapped around off camera. The face, like the buzzsaw creatures, had a mouth of spinning razor sharp teeth. This creature, however, had no eyes. There were thousands of thin vein-like structures that poked out from its body like red spikes, and they moved and twitched with the creatures movements like cat whiskers.
>
> As the woman screamed, the creatures screeched, and its mouth opened wider. One of the spikes shot out from its body, impaling the woman, and dragging her toward its mouth.
>
> “Aiden…” The woman weakly gasped before the phone was dropped to the ground. The night sky was all that could be seen until the video ended, but there was plenty more to be heard.
Ralph looked up at Claudia, the phone still in his hands. He looked to her for comfort, but didn’t find any.