Genesis 1:26
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
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Well, good morning Earth! Who would have thought that 6 days of Tribulations would have ended so many of you. A few are still ongoing if ya know what I mean ;) and, to be fair, I did give you some good warnings. Really, more than you deserved. I also did try and warn you about the animals and they still did in a surprisingly large number of you.
Anyhoo, today, from dawn ‘til dusk will be a day of rest and peace. Enjoy!
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I started to quickly pull my things together. I needed to get out of here TODAY. No, fuck Gabe, I needed to get out of here, right now. I was hesitant to place faith in this ‘day of peace’; Gabby was a shithead, annoying, and had entirely too much snark for an ArchAngel that was, quite frankly, unbecoming. What he hadn’t done, at least so far, was lie. Not even once as far as I could tell. This ‘day of rest and peace’ that was technically half-a-day was crap. I didn't even have the time to screw around with trying to discover if the Penitent System had a way to file a complaint ticket, doubtful as it was that that feature had been set up. Regardless of all that bullshit, I had until dusk to find a better solution than hanging out in my car for the foreseeable future.
I grabbed my spare fanny pack and put in the extra .38 rounds. I was tempted to go back to the hill, now that there would be ‘rest and peace’, but I had no idea how far that peace would extend or when I would actually be able to reach someplace that I could consider remotely safe.
Knowing that something took ‘about an hour or so’ to travel by car didn’t mean shit when compared to walking. I was from LA, everything was "a half-hour" away, by car. I’ve had a shockingly small amount of knowledge on how that translated to actual walking time like some sort of New York pedestrian.
I especially didn’t want to be walking about at night, when that stupid shadow Nemesis wolf would be even more of a pain in the ass. No, I had to get out of here now.
I refilled my water bladder and put in a pinch of salt. Even cold, a wolfed down can of chef boyardee ravioli hit just right. I was ravenous and decided to take down another even if both sat a bit heavy in my stomach, but that was alright. I chugged more water from a jug until I felt like I would burst.
Still, I felt like I should go back to the hill… I took a last lap through my car, hunting for anything that might be useful. Hat and sunglasses on, backpacking bag on my bag, bug-out bag over my chest. I was ready to go. I saw a box on the floor. A small cube made of blue velvet. I had thought I lost that. That had been the real pull back towards the hill. I opened it and looked at the ring for a long minute then slipped it on my pinky. I could feel like shit later. Now was time to leave.
I headed out of the campsite and started down the hill. I tried to keep calm but I couldn’t help but keep my hand on my pistol and my head on a swivel.
I made it to the top of the descent and took a few steps before I stopped in shock. I had been kind of expecting it to have been a sheer cliff but as I looked at it, it looked more and more exactly the same as it had when we drove over it six days ago. I watched in horror as I followed my tire tracks down the hill. My tire tracks. How were they still there? That was… impossible.
I stood there, staring, following the tracks as I imagined my truck’s lurching, I could still hear Casey’s shrieks as I passed certain parts. It seemed almost ridiculous, but it felt like I was having a spiritual experience as I followed tire tracks from a week ago.
The drive we had made before all this shit happened. It was real. It also fairly brutally squashed the ‘alien theory’ that had found itself silently growing in my head. Oh. Fuck. God, Heaven, it was all real… and that meant… I was damned.
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My somewhat-but-totally-not-a-meltdown faded through hard walking miles. The road had branched off a few times, but those weren't a risk I was willing to take.
It was an odd sort of peace, I could hear the forced-to-be-somewhat-tame curses and surprisingly lurid dark promises of all sorts of woodland critters. It was like they weren’t even allowed to be too overly violent in their words. Still, creative allusions or not, I could translate what they meant pretty easily.
Squirrel? Wants to bury acorns in your internal cavities. And NOT the easy-to-reach cavities either.
Deer? Now, apparently, carnivores, but only for human meat.
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How about a hawk that tried to dive-bomb me from above? It ended up softly landing on my shoulder and nuzzled its beak against me as it raged in repressed fury. Then, seemingly in shock, it knocked itself off my shoulder with a very unhawk-like squawk of alarm.
It glared at me then pulled back into the sky. I had tried to shoot it while it was struggling on the ground, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. It would have been… just so wrong. The thought of ruining this sense of peace filled me with an incredible sense of sadness at the thought of breaking it. And of dread. In that instant, I knew without a doubt, that if I pulled that trigger, the hawk would still be alive, but I would surely be dead.
I had also been trying to replicate the ‘force’ wave I had done while I was fighting the wolves. It felt like I was getting somewhere at some point, but I held back because I really didn’t want to get lethargic and nihilistic and then find myself out here at night. Other than that concern, there seemed to be an overall lack of urgency in my efforts.
I kept trying to recall and familiarize myself with that feeling. Threat? Danger? Would I only be able to do it in life-or-death situations? What ‘type’ of magic was it even? Pure, or maybe unattuned? UnAffinitied? I didn't know if that was actually a word but I plumbed my brain for every bit of video game and RPG knowledge I had about magic systems.
I felt the tension on the nape of my neck, but it was muted now, lacking the sense of sharp anxiety that normally came with the tension. More like a frenemy was looking at you from across a room at a mutual friend's party and less like your Nemesis was debating the best way to murder you to avenge their family’s brutal deaths. I turned, “Yes?” I saw the wolf was limping, likely from where I had shot it. Good to know that it didn’t heal that fast.
I laughed and continued walking. Left or right? I closed my eyes and spun around as I recalled the path I had taken. Left.
I did my best bugs bunny meme face as I turned my face to the side, “No.”
Then there was silence for a while as we walked, one behind the other.
That took a moment to click, “Oh, Casey? Duck went up.” I pointed up.
“No, really, she went to Heaven.”
The next part didn’t come in quite so clear but the gist was, ‘why would a Pure Human make filth like you her mate’. I was still getting familiarized with some of the intricacies of the animal language, but I could now tell that the wolf was a she-wolf.
“Well, we both lost our mates, the only difference is that I’m not crying about it.” Well, anymore. I cringed a bit, Casey would have hated that I had just used that as a point to hurt someone.
That earned me a massive growl that would have had me worried even through my car window, that said, I had already been gently nuzzled by a murderous, outraged hawk today. Actually. I stopped and turned around.
“I’ll go back if you come here.”
The she-wolf narrowed her eyes and approached me.
“Closer.”
She didn’t move, “I won’t go back if you don’t come closer. We can’t hurt each other either so what’s the problem?”
She let out a low growl then crept closer and closer, I waved her forward as I sat into a squat. She approached, openly hostile. I reached out a hand and she jumped backward. I took out some jerky from my bug-out and held it out and to the side. The she-wolf sniffed and slowly approached it. She was probably hungry, I guess being that focused on killing me and being unsuccessful at it didn’t leave you with a lot of time to hunt.
She leaned forward to take it and I scritched her behind the ear. She started to snap toward my hand then jumped back.
I threw the jerky to her and she nearly snatched it but ended up just letting it fall to the ground. I shrugged and turned back down the road.
“I lied.”
I heard her pacing and howling, a few other distant calls returned her pained howl. She had almost killed me and I had, stupidly, spared her. I could have killed her and compared to that, a non-consensual scritch and some free jerky is a pretty tame price.
Over my shoulder, I made an empty chatting motion with my hand. I heard her growl one more time and then run off. Good riddance.
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I turned down the final dirt road as the sun was on its last legs, it had already touched the horizon. I had been picking up my pace since there was no way I would be spending the night outdoors. About a mile down the road and set back a good distance was a house, old-farmer style, including some somewhat out-of-place looking white-picket fences.
I was pretty sure that there was still a wolf somewhere behind me, but I hadn’t heard her talking for a good while now, so I had to assume that she’d gotten distracted or maybe was sulking somewhere. Regardless, future-Thomas problem.
I started cranking the flashlight as I got to the beginning of the road that led to the house, “Kitty’s Cat Farm, Est. 2008.”
Shit.
I took off at a dead sprint toward the house. I could feel the calm starting to leech from the air, it would be any minute now. I pumped my arms as the soreness from hiking all day became barely a faint afterthought.
A flash reached out of the long shadows of the high-grass next to me and clawed at my face, but I’m unwounded as it bursts apart in a soft boom of light. Suddenly, I’m very glad for my earlier decision to not pull the trigger against the hawk.
There’s another burst of heatless fire to the side as two tumbling creatures evaporated from existence.
The divine protection was holding, but not for much longer, since it had been tested against me, I could feel as it continued to drain from the surroundings. My hands continued to pump as I closed the distance to the house. I stamped up the steps to the porch, ripped open the screen door to the covered patio, and pushed at the front door, locked. I squinted my eyes, desperately looking in the growing dark for a path inside that wouldn’t have me breaking down the door and leaving it open for whatever wanted to follow me in.
Opening Ceremonies Complete. Beginning of the End has… begun.