Timeline: Present
Point of View: Ralph & Claudia
Location: Earth (Ralph’s Apartment in Iowa)
From inside the apartment, they watched a few more videos from the snap map. Hauntingly, they didn’t see anything posted within the last few days from within Colorado. It was as if there was a digital void with Colorado at the center. On the outskirts of Colorado, in a wave, were recent snaps that stretched out to about a third of the US. Some were standard snaps: kids being silly, girls dolled up, teenagers dancing to popular music. But those snaps were slowly becoming a rarity.
The other snaps were the ones Claudia and Ralph were the most interested in. They showed mostly people in hiding, asking for help, reaching out for connection. But every few videos they opened would give glimpses of the creatures, too.
Most were glimpses of the hive mind giants, either outside windows or silhouetted against buildings. One jarring video showed a woman trying to lean out of her hiding place (it wasn’t clear in the video what she was hiding in), trying to get a better angle of the creature. The creature’s shadow showed it moving away from her across a patch of grass, its shadows being creating from distant street lamps. Each step was a low thud that echoed out from the video. The woman’s breathing was becoming labored as she leaned out from her hiding spot. The creature was approaching, and its arm came into view first. The camera became shaky as she zoomed into the creature, getting a glimpse of the odd little eye-creatures that were connected to construct the giant. Each little eye was looking in a different direction, scanning, sharing information, each having a singular brain that fed into the total hive mind. One of those eyes seemed to catch a glimpse of the woman, the pupil sharply turning to face her. Then, in only a second, all eyes from the arm turned to face her. The woman quietly shrieked, then retreated back into hiding. The loud thuds of footsteps grew faster and louder as the creature approached. She was crying when the video ended, visibly shaking with each stomp.
Claudia and Ralph did at least get a few glimpses of giants of different sizes. A few were relatively small, the size of a human basketball player. One was significantly larger, taller than a two-story home. Most were somewhere in between. The eyeball creatures that they were made up of, however, were always the same size, and the size of the giant as a whole seemed co-related to the number of creatures within its construction.
There were other creatures, too. They were more rare, but there were glimpses of them scattered in the videos. There was the worm creature, which seemed the length of several buses end to end. It had the bristles or rods that protruded from its body that it seemed to use as feelers (and occasionally, as seen in the earlier video, as weapons). The head of the worms resembled the buzzsaw in that it had a similar mouth structure, rows of blades that rounded its mouth as if on a track, scraping against each other as they spun. The major difference, however, was the size. The worm’s mouth could fit an entire buzzsaw creature within it.
Another creature was spotted in only a single video, and it was fleeting, seeming not to attack anyone. It was a flying creature, far in the distance, with large wings. It was too blurry to make out any details. However, the thought of that particular monsters existing, one from the sky, did not sit well with either of them.
They learned from the videos that the creatures didn’t come out in the day. It wasn’t clear where they went when the sun came out, but people were saying that they didn’t resurface until the Earth was again caked in darkness. There were videos of large tunnels burrowed into the dirt, and the speculation was that the worms were hiding under the surface. As for as the giants and the seclusive flying creatures, there were no known theories as to where they went. Claudia theorized that they returned to their planet to wait out the day. She also theorized that the yellow sun on Earth was too bright for the creatures, compared to their dull red and white stars. She figured it was painful for their eyes, so accustomed to the dark.
There were also videos of human bodies. The giants were the creatures spreading the bodies against walls while the worms seemed to consume them. A few videos caught glimpses of the portals, the unfortunate humans that had once had power from the red planet. These bodies seemed to glow with a dull light emanating off of the carnage. A video out of South Dakota showed a giant stepping out of one such body-become-portal. First its hand shot out from the split rib cage, a small spray of blood popping as it did, the arm pushing through next with a gush of liquid. Then the rest of the body squeezed through, slowly and tightly, as if birthed. It looked malformed once it had exited, the hive creatures condensed and shifted out of place to make room for the exit. The giant, once freed, rebuilt it’s body by moving the creatures back to their intended places. There were no videos of the worms emerging from the portals. This disappointed Claudia, who really wanted to know how such impressive mass could squeeze through such a small opening.
The videos shows storefronts across the Midwest littered with skin and blood, the giants painting every visible surface with a body, eagerly creating more and more portals. The more portals they opened, the more gateways available to the creatures back on their planet to gain access to Earth.
When Ralph once asked why there were no buzzsaws roaming the planet, Claudia gave him a simple answer: “There aren’t many left.” Her matter-of-fact tone sent a shiver down Ralph’s spine, thinking about her ruthlessness in eliminating the creatures.
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They stopped searching for videos midway through the day, the light coming in from the blinds outside becoming a darker orange. They’d seen more than they were ready to see. Humans were no longer at the top of the food chain.
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After they’d eaten a quick dinner (Claudia a sandwich and chips, Ralph some pizza pockets), they talked through how to proceed. They knew they’d be spending the night at the apartment, but in the morning, Claudia, was eager to begin their move.
“What move?” Ralph had asked nervously.
“The same plan as before. To find others.”
Ralph fidgeted, playing with his hands. “Claudia, I don’t know if we watched the same videos, but… I’m not going back outside.”
“Don’t be a bitch,” Claudia said, “It’s safe to travel in the day. As long as we stay inside at night…”
“You don’t know that. It’s called a theory for a reason. I know you’ve killed buzzsaws, but have you killed any giants yet? Or any of those tremor-looking worm things?”
“They weren’t called tremors,” Claudia said.
“What?”
“They were called graboids,” Claudia said, “Tremors was the name of the movie. It’s like the monster being Victor Frankenstein’s monster, but everyone thinking the monster was named Frankenstein. You’re misusing the term.”
Ralph stared at Claudia for a brief moment before saying, “Why are you the way that you are?”
Claudia only shrugged her shoulders. “Look, what do you want to do here? Accept defeat? Lay around in your apartment until the power goes out?”
“Ideally, yes.”
“We need to find others like us. Forget Ctaolthost’s mission for a second, and just consider basic survival. If we’re going to survive, there is strength in numbers. If there are more of us, more abilities, we will be safer overall. We’ll have a better chance of winning... of surviving, I mean, if and when we have to face these creatures.”
“So let’s put out an announcement on Reddit and Snapchat and everywhere else, then," Ralph said desperately, "‘Here we are! Come here! We’re waiting in safety!’”
Claudia thought for a moment, considering how to approach Ralph’s fear of the outside. It was understandable, sure, but she still thought of him as a little bitch. Maybe it would change once he used his power more, once he got a feel for his abilities. Part of her wanted to be angry, to berate him, to force him to her will. However, she knew that tact wouldn’t work, would instead put a rift between them that would impact their ability to work together in the future.
“Okay,” she said, “Well let’s at least start with Reddit. Let’s message in that forum you found earlier, see what these people say. Then we’ll go from there. Deal?”
Ralph thought for a few seconds, concerned that Claudia had given in to reason too easily. Alas, he got what he wanted for now, so he was okay with kicking the argument down the road. “Deal.”
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The internet was out, so they used Ralph’s phone (which, like Lisa’s phone, still had 3G at least and a bar or two). They opened Reddit and searched for the earlier post.
There were more Reddit posts about the monsters now, people trying to figure out what was happening, how much time they had before the monsters reached them. There were more pictures and videos of the creatures, but it was essentially more of the same from what they had already seen on the snap map. However, the difference in Reddit was all the people analyzing what they were seeing as a community, connecting the dots as a group instead of as a solo unit. Reddit was an interesting virtual community. Give these people a common goal or challenge, and they’d work to solve it in hours or days. Leave them to their own devices, however, and it quickly became toxic and cruel. It was a classic microcosm of human nature. People needed a common goal.
Ralph and Claudia were still at odds on what their own common goal was, and it didn’t seem they’d come together anytime soon. Claudia worried she’d have to drag the man halfway across the states when the time came.
Their message to the others was simple and straight forward.
> We’ve been to the red planet and back multiple times. One of us has been to two pylons, the pits of energy that give you more power, and the other has been to one. We have unique abilities now. We’ve killed several of the minotaur or buzzsaw creatures, the ones that walk on four legs, have two arms, multiple eyes and spinning, razor sharp teeth. One of us was consumed by the carnivorous red trees, but survived. We’ve been across the river of blood, and inside the buzzsaw encampment. We have abilities that will be useful when fighting the creatures, and we seek others with similar innate abilities. We seek to train and build an army. Please tell us where to meet.
With the message sent, they slept. Ralph slept deeply, but Claudia kept herself awake for as long as she could, eager to see the creatures. They came a couple hours after sunset. She only experienced two of them before sleep took her. They did not come together. One lumbered through the streets outside, shaking the building as it passed, and Claudia quietly watched from the darkness of the room, studying it. In that moment, watching the lumbering beast, she did not feel powerful. She felt like a cowering little girl, watching her parents screaming in their burning house as the red face laughed.
She didn’t watch the second. She was in the darkness of the room trying to sleep, but couldn’t, those stomping waves pulsating through her brain as the creatures wandered the world that now belonged to them.
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Ralph shook her awake the next morning eagerly. She hadn’t dreamed that night, and she awoke groggily. Dreams were a double-edged sword. Without them, she awoke tired and it was harder to get the day started. With them, however… The dreams haunted he throughout the day.
“What?” She asked, “What time is it?”
“A little after nine. They wrote back. Or he did, I should say.”
Claudia sat up quickly and took the phone from Ralph’s hands.
> I’m glad you reached out. Name’s Mitchell. We’re gathering in Charleston, West Virginia, which was a central point for the first few groups of us. Where are you? How long until you can reach us? What abilities do you have? The creatures haven’t reached us yet. We expect them soon. Probably before you can reach us. Come soon. We’ll wait for you here (if we survive).
Ralph looked up at Claudia and saw a smile on her face. He knew what that smile meant, and he knew he’d lose the battle for staying in hiding. He knew they’d probably leave that morning. He also realized that, if he had wanted to stay inside, he probably should have deleted the message before Claudia awoke. But there was a part of him that wasn’t a coward, a part of him that knew what was coming. A part of him that, maybe, was a little excited.
“Goddamnit. I’ll start packing,” he said.