Mares

Off in the distance, a monster roars. The bunker shakes, gravel falling from the ceiling. Screams echo off of every wall, children curled up in balls on their makeshift cots, the elderly hunched up in corners. And then… silence. A moment of peace. The children raise their heads, their parents still holding them tight. A claw pierces the ceiling, tearing through feet of concrete and raining rubble from the sky. Pincers, large as full on metro buses, terrifying, covered in a shriveled shell reminiscent of a boiled crawfish, snap at air. A brave soul senselessly shoots at it with a shotgun, the crack of the chamber sounding off, shells bouncing off its impenetrable armor. He’s met with a whoosh of air, a splatter of blood, the shotgun thrown from his hands. The claw retreats, taking its human morsel with it.

Albert wakes up, the clouds drifting beneath him. He feels the wind rushing through his hair, distinctly aware that he’s flying. No, not flying. He screams, struggling against the tight grip of the giant monster. It doesn’t even acknowledge its prey, doesn’t even react. Its eyes, cloudy and scarred, stare straight into the sun, as if tracking the celestial sphere across the sky. A huge banyan tree emerges from the clouds, larger than anything Albert had seen before. It reaches miles into the atmosphere, towering over even the monster that clutched him. The overgrown lobster roars, and a branch large enough to fit a hundred monsters descends in front of the hunter and its prey. The monster scrambles onto the branch, an odd and vaguely humorous sight as its rear legs dangle in the air. The tree groans with effort as the monster is lifted into its trunk, Albert whimpering as darkness engulfs them.

Tilly watches in graven silence as Albert disappears, stolen off his legs in retribution for his courage. She watches in graven silence as the claw rises so high it disappears into the white. She watches in graven silence as she becomes the last of her bloodline. Then she’s off, comforting the survivors, gathering the dead. Dragging mutilated, bloody bodies out from the stone chunks cratered on the floor. She flinches not at the sight of her friends lying lifeless on the floor, not at the cries of children for their passed fathers, not at the tepid condolences offered by those who knew her brother. She hands out what meager medical supplies remain, bandages and splints, then the last clean t-shirts, and finally the dirty dish rags. Recycled styrofoam cups of vodka, to sterilize their wounds or numb their pain. Ignoring her aching shoulder, she begins repairing the ceiling. It’s a futile effort, she knows. No amount of protection will stop a hungry Mare, as they’ve come to call them, mutated sea creatures manufactured by their otherworldly neighbors. But it gives them a small purpose, something to do while they wait for their inevitable end. She was different from Albert like that. She didn’t need to know why, just what. He was always theorizing and explaining, sitting around trying to figure out why the aliens had made the Mares. And while he’d spend his days turning over ideas, she’d forage for food on the surface, keep the bunker running. She missed him already. He was gone.

Albert hears the loud thuds of the Mare’s metal feet echoing throughout the tree. He can’t help but wonder why the aliens gave their creations feet, turning them from scuttling crustaceans into bipedal monstrosities. The darkness covers everything, but the Mare seems to know where it’s going. He hears other roars, coming from every nook of the massive chamber. A sliver of light, truly miniscule, pierces into the center of the trunk. For a moment, he sees the glint of a thousand eyes, the massive silhouettes of Mares a hundred times the size of the one carrying him. The light disappears, and he’s flung into the void. He flies, truly flies, confounded. The sliver returns for a split second, and he sees a humanoid orca standing over his former captor, the latter motionless on the ground. He keeps hurtling, feels the rush of a wall coming up against him, braces for impact, for death. But his neck doesn’t snap. Instead, he finds himself slowing, sliding to a stop on a sticky, slimy surface. He feels air rushing up behind him as a guttural sound bellows around him. He shakes, hanging on for dear life as the seal Mare opens its mouth and sings its dastardly song. Then there’s a coughing sound, and a lump of mucus rushes up from the throat, expelling him out of the Mare and restoring him to his terminal velocity. The ground rushes up to meet him, but the mucus offers a cushion. He exhales, thanking all the deities in the sky for his life.

Tilly grabs a scythe off the wall, testing its edge along her fingernail. The first hatch creaks open, then the second. Bright sunlight enters the dimly lit bunker, the blinking fluorescent lights instantly overpowered. She walks out, breathing in the fresh air, the scent of wild grass, the smell of easily forageable barley. She methodically cuts the barley at its stem, harvesting enough to last a few more weeks. She remembers her brother trying to turn the barley into something more palatable, her brother serving up inedible broth, her brother laughing off his failure. She slashes at the weeds that surround her little patch of food, rips at their roots. Damn her brother. Damn his courage. She takes a breath, steadies her hands. He was gone.

Albert untangles himself from the mucus, dripping with slime but alive nonetheless. He gropes in the dark, blind, disoriented, trying to stay silent. He soon finds that his steps, no matter how loud, pale in comparison to the rumbling movements of the Mares, and so rushes around, trying to find a way out. He finally feels the inside of the trunk, expecting rough bark, but instead finds cold metal. The shape of roots run across the ground, but it all feels like steel rather than organic matter. There’s no rivets or screws, no seams where plates would meet. The entire tree seems to be one huge piece of metal. Albert shakes his head, chastising himself. He needed to get out, escape, not explore the home of the monsters that had taken the world. The tree shakes, groans, shrieks, and then a Mare stomps in, emerging from a dark hole. That must be how he got in. How he gets out.

Tilly gathers her grain, takes it to the silo. The silo had been with the bunker since some one-percenter had built it out of paranoia. She sneers at the irony. The rich prick had obviously never made it into his bunker, since it had been abandoned when her party found it. She feels the bunker rumble, sees the dust falling onto the ground. She drops her grain and runs towards the others, reaches, leaps… a boulder of solid concrete lands in front of her, separating her from her pack. A giant beak swoops in and grabs her, tearing her flailing feet off the ground and into the sky. She falls unconscious, and the world fades to black.

Albert paces in front of a seamless wall, hearing the tree groan for the seventh time, waiting for an opportunity to escape. A pelican flies in, the most normal looking Mare so far, clutching an unconscious girl in its grasp. He notices the girl’s auburn hair, her pale white skin. Tilly. He takes not a moment’s glance at the door before rushing towards her sister. The pelican gently lowers its quarry at the killer whale’s feet, bowing before an apparent alpha. The orca nudges his sister with its snout, snorting hot white vapor into the air. He sees his sister wake up, groan and scream. He wills his legs to run closer, wills his feet to move, but feels himself stand in place, steadfast as he watches.

Tilly wakes up, feels the lumpy, cold ground beneath her. She hears cavernous roars, chirps, bellows. She turns her head, sees her brother, staring at her with hollow, sunken eyes. He’s alive. A head rushes out of the darkness, its spotted black and white skin terrifying in its size and speed. She screams only once as the orca bites down on her leg, pulls her off the ground. She hears her brother yell to the heavens, call to the Mares. The orca tilts its head, as if trying to find some invisible pest. She feels herself dropping, feels the ground coming to meet her. She feels her brother lunge to catch her, the warmth of his arms. They stand there for a minute, embraced in that solemn hug. Then the orca’s head returns, and they run. Run for their lives into a darkness they cannot see, into a silence they cannot hear. The two of them, their hands still together, pound on the seamless door. She feels the tree groan. He hears the call of a Mare. The door slides open, but it’s too late. She flinches. And the orca bears down on them.