A long time ago:

They hated this new world. The world of ruin. The world of death. A place of devastation and the realm of loneliness. So much painful loneliness. As they crawled out of the secured bunker by traversing through the cracks in the reinforced concrete and assembled themselves in the ruined corridor outside, they saw what happened with their parents. The parents never abandoned them; they were fools to even think so. Instead, they died right before the mighty doors, attempting to enter to get them….

Her

…out of there. To the end, they loved them. The misshapen human form, made of countless insects, howled with grief. They could speak now, although their words were produced through the sound made by the friction of sturdy insectoid legs and the clacking of their jaws. They could speak now, though their words were produced by the friction of sturdy insectoid legs and the clacking of their jaws. At long last, they could think now. Clearly, as never before. They could control their movements now, operating each of the hundreds of smaller bodies with perfect synchronicity, looking through the countless compound eyes. And they would throw all these gifts away, just for the lives of their parents.

“We…

I

“... never wanted to be normal in like this! Why is it happening to us? Not fair!”

One of the first blessed in the New World thrashed angrily. The human-shaped figure, made of insect bodies pressed together, kicked the wall and crushed stones with its newfound strength. The strange insects that made up their new body were much stronger than they looked. Only a few new bodies got crushed, but hardly any pain registered in the mind of the newborn being.

“Unfair! They were supposed to be happy! We were supposed to be happy! Everything should be normal! Why, why, why, why?!” Hate has arisen in them. Who caused it? What monster made them leave their bleached bones behind in the room? Who ruined the best day? They will find them, tear them apart and devour them until nothing is left! Not even bones!

With effort, they forced hate to step back. First, they needed to think. What should they do? Outside!

“Yes, that’s it!” They had to find someone. A policeman, a medic, someone. They would know what to do. Mama always said to ask an authority for help if something happened.

They moved their gaze to the ruined and half-buried hallway. Lights were smashed, walls were half-broken, and stones blocked stairs. “No problem,” they reassured themselves as their human form disintegrated and the insect ran across the room, looking for a way out. They found a crack large enough, and the stream of insects poured into it like a dark river. It took them some time to run between the cracks, trying to find an exit. But at long last, they had found it. Bleak light from one of the cracks.

“Freedom!” The living carpet formed a single file line and rushed out. “Find anyone. Ask for help. Ask for…”

They came outside. But for them, it was an entirely different world. Ruins stretched as far as the eye could see. Dark clouds swirled above instead of a blue sky, occasionally pelting the ground with lightning strikes that wreathed even more desolation. Bodies were everywhere, some torn apart, some cut in two, some mutilated, and many more little more than charred remains. Not all the corpses were human; dead monstrosities of various sizes lay in eternal sleep amidst the ruins.

A strong wind ripped the ground apart, lifting corpses off the earth and breaking others into ash. The never-ending stream of vehicles on the ground and in the sky was now replaced by a silent graveyard of metal and rust that filled the former streets. Buildings, some of which had once reached the sky, became a series of toppled and broken teeth, exposing their metallic bones to their eyes.

“Who… What?” They asked in disbelief. Their bodies scattered in all directions, trying to find someone, anyone, alive. They only found more insects feasting on the corpses of humans. When these creatures saw the unusual moving insects, they rushed at the reborn human and started devouring them. In their shock, they didn’t fight back. Daddy always thought that it was bad to hurt others. One by one, their bodies were torn apart, but instead of losing awareness, they gained it, becoming the very insects that ate them. Soon enough, only they stood alone in this district, bigger than before.

A flash of light appeared on the horizon, filling them with hope. Heroes! Heroes must’ve existed and were now coming to help! Everything is going to be okay! A new sunrise came closer and closer, but instead of heroes, an arc of energy swept across the sky, turning the clouds into steam and licking off the tops of the damaged skyscrapers. Slabs of stone the size of cars poured from above, and they broke apart, flying around this cascade of destruction.

It was… funny. Before, they had to struggle to see even the simplest things. It was hard to watch Dad play ball with the neighborhood kids. The ball was moving too fast for their eyes. But today their…

Her.

… senses were heightened, allowing them to see the tiniest vibrations in the air; their perception slowed, as if they swam underwater. Everything, them included, slowed to a crawl, and they utilized this unexpected boon to evade the doom from above, dodging both stone and overheated steel beams, gathering once more on a small mound before the submerged hospital.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Surely, someone is out there. They thought, feeling the creeping dread slowly fill their minds. The world before was filled with music, with life: the constant chatter of other people, the sounds of moving vehicles and working displays. The world from now on was a silent place; only rare stones fell from the ruins, and sometimes a gust of wind broke the silence. Surely, we are not the last!

They spread their bodies farther and farther, finding no one. No one is in the ruins above. No one was in those crushed basements. Non alive is on the ground. Death and destruction are everywhere.

“Where is everyone?!” they screamed in rage, crushing stones under their fists made of countless bugs, just as pain stabbed their mind. The figure made of insects grabbed its head and howled, instinctively forcing the rest of their bodies back to the center of their mass. As the bodies returned, the pain retreated. The pain returned after the bugs spread out a bit more, and they nodded, accepting a certain limit to how far they could move their individual bodies.

“Fine, so no spreading beyond these limits,” they decided, looking around. “Home.”

Countless living creatures flowed on the broken roads, moving in the direction where their home used to be, back in their previous life. With some difficulty, they remembered the road. They wanted nothing more than to lock themselves in their room, howling in fear and grieving alone…

It was gone. Familiar streets where their…

Her

…parents took them for walks. They were now reduced to rubble. Trees in parks were uprooted or reduced to cinders, and the few that remained withered before their eyes. The very soil looked sickly; all the grass on it turned gray. Bodies of dead people and animals filled the place. And the house, the tall apartment building, had been crushed by no less than fifty fallen cars and lay in ruins. Without any hope, they sent their bodies to scout the place; maybe someone needed help; what if there was something familiar left... Nothing. Death and the wind—this was the glorious new world in which they…

She!

…Could walk. They began laughing. A maddening sound, laced with horror and grief, came from the countless life forms in their biomass. No one was left. It was a world of rot and corpses, and they were the sole rulers!

Hunger has crept in. Some forms were already in need of sustenance. With disgust in their minds, they unleashed themselves on the remains of dead animals. Not humans. They had to have standards.

Must we really?

“Yes!” they angrily screamed at some inner voice. Their parents would have…

The figure stopped. Who cares anymore? Animals or humans, who would care? The tiny mouths dug caverns through a dead dog, cleaning the smelling meat off the bones and sucking in the juices of popped eyes. Feeding themselves, they walked back and examined the dead. An elderly woman, her arms wrapped around a small child, an infant. She tried so hard to save him. And... and fortunately she failed, for otherwise the little one would suffer and die more slowly, with no one to help him or her. It was hard to guess the gender, because a metal spike had pierced both of them, and they hadn’t felt like undressing the corpses. These people had suffered enough. The thought of eating the corpses and desecrating them further was disgusting. But they could at least give the dead a proper burial. Let the dead pass on to a happier world in peace. Let this young one have a whole new, joyful life beyond the dark clouds and away from the realm of death.

Yes, you are right. Let’s not be meanies. Let’s become heroes!

“Heroes don’t exist,” they said and stopped. So what if something doesn’t exist? They didn’t exist in this form before!

In search of tools, they walked halfway back to the ruined apartment building, and the ground in the middle of the road opened, breaking before the might of a mighty body. Enormous jaws, four in total, collapsed around their main body, swallowing them up in an instant. They experienced seconds of pain as their bodies were swallowed down the attacker’s throat, and then their bodies were dissolved in the acid in what passed for this creature’s stomach.

The nearest surviving bodies retreated in unison, afraid for the time, and they watched the attacker from other bodies hidden on all sides of the road, busy scurrying to hide from the assault. It was a large worm, a creature larger than most of the wrecked vehicles on the road. Its flesh was pale and contorted as the muscles beneath it swung the creature in different directions. The head had no eyes, but a long tongue reached out to taste the ground, and four large mandibles were larger than a human body. Vibrations. That was how the creature hunted. The worm’s huge body twisted as it crushed the ground, trying to burrow. Then something changed. It, too, became a part of them.

They could no longer smile, but for the first time today, they felt a moment of happiness. Digging up corpses out of the rubble and creating graves would be too hard for them as they were. But now they were strong.

It took them hours to get used to their new blind body. They used the eyes of the smaller insects to guide their massive lump of flesh, dragging it back and forth across the park, playing with the wrecked cars, picking them up with their jaws. It was hard to exert the exact amount of force needed to not break the metal completely, and doubly hard to adjust to move in the right direction. Turns out that when you have an omnidirectional view, controlling a single blind spot in it isn’t easy. What looked right often ended up being left. And the sense of vibrations didn’t help one bit; if anything, it threw them off more than once.

Eventually, they were confident enough to use the new body to dig a new entrance to a place where the remains of their parents lay. A human form followed, took the dead in their hands and carried Mama and Papa outside. They brought them to the park near the home and buried them in the gray earth. Next came the other bodies. It was a long task, but they completed it, creating smaller humanoid forms and carrying the deceased out of the ruins to the makeshift mass grave formed around their parents.

“Buried in an unmarked grave in the dead world.” They wanted to howl in rage again. “And we don’t even know any prayers. What a failure we are. Can’t even make a proper burial.”

They left their own bones in the medical facility. They didn’t deserve to have a proper burial. Not after everything that happened. But if there was any justice—any mercy—in the world at all, Mama and Papa didn’t go on their last journey alone. There were a lot more kids for them to care about now.