Matsuda lead, Qadira stayed in the middle, and Wil brought up the rear. They pealed at an easy pace along the sidewalk where they were afforded some cover from the overhanging tree branches. If Matsuda saw something, he would raise his hand and they would swerve off the sidewalk, onto the nearest lawn, hop off their bikes, and dart for cover behind a house.

They only had to do this a few times over the next several blocks. The fog hadn’t gotten any worse, but it hadn’t gotten better, either, and their visibility was cut to just a block or two ahead at most. Each time they stopped to hide, Wil saw a shape ahead of them in the fog.

All of them were big, and all of them were inhuman.

One of them, he was sure, was one of those water tower-shaped spider things. It was over six stories tall, and only visible as a dark gray hazy shape in the distance. The green light of its many eyes glowed through the fog and made it appear as if the bulbous top of the many-legged being were surrounded by a sickly halo. It made some kind of chittering sound mixed with a metallic drone that gave Wil a headache and he had to plug his ears.

It was difficult to tell at this distance, but other, smaller gray shapes attended the huge creature as it stalked the streets. Wil guessed they were other people, dozens, perhaps, all following in the wake of the otherworldly thing.

“What the hell are those thing?” Wil whispered to Matsuda as they stared at it. They crouched behind a garage and a pair of garbage cans with Qadira even father back.

“Nothing good, but they’re definitely a bigger problem when there’s more of them,” Matsuda said. They watched in silence until the arachnid-creature and its small horde had fully passed, then got on their bikes when the coast was clear.

They had decided to try for Broadway Bridge, since it was relatively close, and if it was impassable, they would move down to Steel Bridge, then on to Burnside Bridge, and so on down the river. The other two times they had to stop, something passed in front of them again, and then something on he street beside them.

They never saw the thing on the next street. Their only warning was a tree suddenly cracking in two and falling over behind a house, and then all three of them ran for the nearest hiding spot: the porch of a house with a closed door. Something huge thumped behind the house they crouched under, and let out a baying howl. A series of heavy thumps echoed through the foggy streets, thankfully receding and getting farther away.

The last thing they saw, a block from Broadway Bridge, only flashed by in front of them for an instant. They had steered their bikes off the sidewalk and hidden under a nearby porch when they noticed one of the slow zombies (they couldn’t tell if it had black eye or green at this distance) shuffling across an intersection. Wil was debating whether or not they could just ride past it when the thing appeared.

It was the size of a Cessna, with wings to match the small airplane model. It descended from the sky, gave a leathery flap of four butterfly-like wings, grabbed the shuffling zombie off the road, and soared away with it. Wil only had an impression of an avian body, elegant and sleek, and huge talons.

Qadira was right.

There was definitely more out there than just the things with green and black eyes.

“We need to rethink our approach,” Matsuda said.

“Yeah no shit,” Qadira whispered. “Like maybe no approach.”

“I’m not leaving Naomi,” Wil said.

“I hate to break it to you, man, but I don’t think anybody’s gonna be alive in Portland proper.”

“Then head back on your own. Rosa should still be with her family. Or you and Matsuda can go too, but I’m still moving in,” Wil said. Qadira shook her head and muttered a curse.

“No, I’m still going in,” Matsuda said.

“Jesus, why?” Qadira demanded. “This guy I get but why you?”

Matsuda shrugged. “I’ve lived a long life. Sounds like somebody needs help. And if we survive, it would be good to know the lay of the land, report it to the Air National Guard if we make it there.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“Crazy bastards,” Qadira said. “Fine. It’s still better than sitting around. Whatever it was that broke the tree a few blocks back could’ve just as easily stomped a house. But I’m not rushing out onto an exposed bridge where anything could pick me off.”

“We’ll need to see what the bridge is like before we formulate any plan,” Matusda said. “But we’re staying under trees for as long as possible.”

“Agreed,” Wil said and they pedaled on.

—————————————————————

Broadway Bridge was gone.

In its place was a stumpy bit of asphalt and brownish red iron support beams that stretched a few yards out over the Willamette River before crumbling into nothing. A few cars were balanced precipitously on the edge of the ruined bridge, one of which see-sawed with metallic squeaks as a gust of wind passed by.

Wil and the others had stopped a couple hundred feet short of the bridge itself, under one of the last trees that provided cover from anything flying overhead.

“Well…the next one it is then. Though if this is a common trend we may want to consider finding a boat,” Matsuda said.

“No way. Absolutely not. I’m never getting in the water again,” Wil said. He gave a quick explanation of whatever the huge creature in the lake had been back at Oak Rest and Matsuda grunted.

“Of course there’s monsters in the water. Stupid of me not to think of it. If things are coming out of the sky, why wouldn’t they be coming out of the water?”

“So we try the next bridge,” Qadira said.

“And we should hurry that way,” Wil said and nodded to the North. A shambling group of humanoid figures was a couple blocks away, and getting closer. They pedaled away without another word.

Steel Bridge was in tact when they reached it, but they heard sounds coming from the center of the bridge and saw a shifting mass of bodies and another of those water-tower spider-things blocking the way. Nobody had to say anything. There was no way they were getting across the bridge without going through the mob of creatures at its center.

Burnside Bridge was next and Wil wanted to dismiss it at first. It was much more narrow than the previous two, and was crowded with cars. Many of the cars burned, or at least sent up thick plumes of black smoke. They’d be slowed to a walking pace and forced to carry their bikes across a crowded bridge with no overhead cover. The Broadway and Steel bridges weren’t exactly covered but they had some metal support structures stretching over them that offered some protection from the sky.

Burnside was just a straight, narrow, open road across the river.

“This’ll do,” Matsuda said.

“What?” Qadira asked.

“I’m not so sure…” Wil added.

“Nothing too big on a bridge this small. Anything human-sized is gonna have to go through a lot of obstacles to get at us. The smoke offers better cover than those metal beams on the last two bridges, and if we are caught in the open, easy enough to duck under or between two of the closely packed cars.”

“Shit,” Wil said. “We’ll have to carry our bikes.”

“They’re light. That’s why I picked them,” Matsuda said.

“And those cars are obstacles for us too. We won’t be able to run,” Qadira said.

“We’re three people. If a mod shows up, it’s gonna have more trouble getting over themselves and the cars than we will. C’mon,” Matsuda said, and rode his bike up to the traffic jam, then dismounted, hoisted it up, and began negotiating his way between the stalled vehicles. Wil sighed and followed. He had to put the long-handled axe through his belt to hold onto his bike better, but it was manageable. Qadira followed, having a little trouble due to her smaller size, but managed to keep up.

Most of the fires appeared to be coming from the interiors or tires of cars that had exploded already, and Matsuda tended to lead them closer to these and the obscuring black clouds they produced. Only a few of the cars were burned out metal husks, and the rest looked like they only had some superficial damage. Many of the cars were empty, but the burning ones were occupied by skeletons, and many more of the cars had bloody, pale corpses inside of them.

“One of those seed rocks ahead,” Matsuda said over his shoulder. “The bad kind.”

“Ah,” Wil said as he peeked up and saw a gray, ovoid object that had smashed a car into the side of the bridge and cracked the concrete behind and around it. It was much the same as the one inside the Gutierrez’s garage: the interior made of gray, fleshy muscle, empty pockets indicating where something had been, and black sludge dried on the ground around it. It appeared empty, but Matsuda veered away from it.

Wil had his eyes locked on the open seed-pod, or whatever it was, so he only heard the flapping above. He didn’t think. He threw himself onto the ground and tried to squeeze under a car as he dropped his bike. His pack prevented him from getting fully beneath the car, and he felt a gust of wind rush over him as something flew mere feet overhead.

Wil’s bike soared up into the air, clutched in the talon of something bigger than any of the cars or trucks on the bridge. It let out a screech somewhere between nails on sheet metal and a child screaming, and tossed the bike into the river below. Wil had a brief glimpse of pale flesh, pebbled or scaled like a lizard, and fours wings. The wings had organic patterns on them, but the creature had faded into the gray fog over the Willamette before he could make sense of them.

“Holy shit!” Wil hissed. Qadira cowered under a car behind him, only the bright, wide whites of her eyes visible in the shadows.

“Stay put,” Matsuda whispered. He was under a truck in front of Wil. “No movement.”

Wil only moved enough to shrug off his pack and fully slide under the car, then froze. There was nothing but the sound of the wind, and distant noises of things howling or crashing through the city. A car alarm went off somewhere farther away, then abruptly shut off.

Then, above them, a flap of wings. Another, receding into the distance, then another again, coming back.

It was circling the bridge, hunting them.