The Smoke

“Well, holy Smokes, look at you!” said Dalton, running his fingers through his niece’s hair. “Aren’t you just a princess?”

She beamed proudly at him from under a wreath of yellow dandelions. “I picked them this morning. Mama and I found them growing in the Sun-Hole.”

Sarah, her mother, slung a rifle over her back and threw a dark look at Dalton. “We’re moving, Dalt. And watch your mouth – she’s only eight.”

He waved dismissively before taking up his own rifle. “The Smoke’s here whether you talk about it or not, Sare.”

“Enough.”

I chuckled to myself as I slipped a sharpened knife into its holster. Years ago, this would’ve been good only as a cooking utensil, but as a Survivor – and a Gutter, at that – I had to make do. The thought of carving a steak again made my mouth water, but that was another lifetime ago.

It’s best, I realized, not to dwell on things that aren’t anymore.

Reece, my younger brother, turned the dial on the radio. A voice burbled among the static; there came something about clear skies and no rain in Westface. He returned the all-clear from our side, Eastface.

Good. Good weather is good luck, as we say.

With the hunting party ready, we soon emerged from the dry sewer tunnels, one person at a time, and sealed the lid behind us. Sarah led us down the cliffside, past rows of blackened houses and tangled frames of metal that some of us once knew as cars.

“We’re deep in fall, boys and girls,” said Sarah, never looking behind her, “So the deer will either be wasted on apples or too busy grazing for the winter to hear us coming. I want to be back before dinner, so let’s make this quick: in and out.”

The younger folk relished these trips. Walking in the sun was a treat for many of us, but hunting gave them a vent for the frustrations of day-to-day life in Eastface. A younger me would have revulsed at their savagery, but long years can change you.

For my part, hunting on the Face always brought up a strange ghost in me. I was old enough to remember the feeling of a warm home in the winter, the smell of a new car, the color of blank paper. These kids – many of them no older than twenty – have only ever known the cramped, cold tunnels of Eastface and the stinking rags on their back.

I seldom thought about life before, but the hole it left behind was particularly wide on these roads. There was a nostalgia in me every march down the cliff, the pain of treasured but untrod memory which wore heavy with the years.

But the love I bore for these people gave me new life. Even in these ashes, there was an ember worth saving.

And besides, being Gutter did have its perks at mealtime.

We continued down the road for a time, averting our eyes from the valley below. It was like a black maze which none of the elders of Eastface dared talk about. That was something from another life.

The mountainside forests and plains were wiry and dry, prone to fires every year and too poor for use as farmland. What crop they did yield made good bait for hunting, and so we marked whatever fruited tree we could find with iron memory.

But these days, the rain rarely came, so our hunting grounds grew fewer. It never failed to amaze me how much we feared the rain even when we needed it most.

Reece, my brother and the only Weather-Teller at Eastface, busied himself with passing wisps of cloud. A clear day, mostly; but they sped by in gathering shreds as the sun crept over the mountain’s ridge.

He whispered a word of concern to Sarah, but with a squint of her eyes at the eastern horizon, she dismissed him and pushed on up a hill of loose stones. Amid the clacking of rocks rolling down the slope, we scrambled up towards the peak of the Face, where deer were known to hide out during the day.

As we ascended, the sky’s blue gave way ever-so-gently to white, and then to pale gray, and with growing fear, Reece again advised Sarah that the weather could take a turn for the worse. The winds, he said, were picking up as if in storm.

She was not as quick to disparage his warning as the clouds rushed by, but they had already come so far. She stood conflicted for a moment, fingers curled over the butt of her gun.

Dalton spoke up. “Scared of a little Smoke, Sare?”

“Shut up, Dalt. It’s not a joke.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.” Dalton’s eyes widened suddenly, maddened, and he clutched at a chain around his neck. “I’m the only fucker here who has a reason to be afraid of them, and you all shit your pants just talking about them.”

“Adie was her friend, too, Dalt,” I cut in. “It’s hunting day; save it for the deer.”

Sarah glowered at Dalton for a moment before setting her jaw and turning back towards the peak. “We’ll take cover up there,” she said at last. “At least until we know where this storm is headed.”

But the clouds only darkened as we clambered over the rocks.

Suddenly, in the distance, there came that call: a haunting melody, at once beautiful but horrific for what it meant.

I’ve heard it only once before in my life. What came after brought non-believers to religion and the religious to abandon god.

We all turned east, at the growing thunderhead which writhed and drove toward us with unnatural direction. The call grew louder as its main bulk approached the mountain.

“The Smoke,” some of the guys whispered between them. “Is that the Smoke? Here? Now?”

With the momentousness of an eclipse, the sun was stolen away by a sudden fog creeping up the mountainside.

Sarah gave the word and we gathered together in a circle. When one of the newer hunters asked what was happening, her face went tight and she gave no answer.

It wasn’t long before the valley in the east disappeared in the gathering fog. My heart leapt into my throat as the call came again – not too far away, now.

The mist some yards away went blue, lit from within by some magic or technology far beyond our understanding.

Inside that mist a light coalesced, like sparks gathering in a filament, and from that point stretched a long mass, leglike, out onto the tumbled scree. At its coming end formed a much more terrible shape, bulbous but arched high, many-armed, scuttling out of the murk like a squid. The light that shaped it never lessened but broke into six embers, spherical like eyes, a bright blue in the gathering gloom. As it shambled towards us in its awful way, it hummed a strange tone – in greeting or threat, I couldn’t say.

The hunters exchanged rasping words, but Sarah quieted them.

“Don’t move. Drop your weapons, slowly.”

Some complied, laying their rifles and machetes on the rocks and raising their open hands shoulder-high.

But only some complied.

A voice ripped through the bated quiet. “You got my wife. You got my wife, you sons-a-bitches!”

It was Dalton, brandishing his rifle. Before any of us could stop him, the gathering Smoke was torn a bullet-hole with a crack like thunder. The creature turned its six lights to him, unfazed, and hummed a long, sonorous dirge in response. After a time, it withdrew into the fog by the same watery light it came.

“Dalt, you really fuckin’ did it this time,” Reece spat. The others dropped whatever provisions or weapons they had and ran while time was still theirs.

What little remained of the choked daylight was quickly shrouding. Overhead, the skies churned and puckered around some unseeable shape. The clouds reached down, a palmless hand, and drove their fingers between us. A whorl of mist enveloped me until I couldn’t see my own hands.

We Survivors tell stories of the Smoke that ruined Earth. And it wasn’t the smoke of war or industry like we always feared, but the smoke of some other world. Aliens, some called them; others called them angels.

Whatever they were, we learned a long time ago that shooting at them was the dumbest fucking thing you could do.

I cried out for Sarah, for Reece, for anyone, but it was like screaming into water. The mist curled over my face, sweet-smelling but thick as oil. My eyes stung.

Bluish flashes arced in the darkness like lightning among the clouds. I could hear screams and voices echoing in that nowhere, in that moment of nothing, but no shapes showed in that formless place.

I lurched forward, stumbling, wading through the mist that trapped me. Tears streamed down my face. My breathing was labored in the heavying air. My heart raced. I called out again with a string of syllables I myself didn’t understand. I felt my knees drifting down, settling into the rocks, and a coldness began to take over me.

Then, as quickly as it came, the mist drew back, and the sun pierced through.

I looked up. Bluish smoke slithered up the side of the peak and over the jagged ridge like a waterfall flowing upstream. The fog hissed as it raced past me.

I saw what it left behind: the shapes of my friends and family. Bodies were huddled on the ground, fetal or splayed, clutching at their faces or burying their heads. But with the coming light, there was movement among them.

They looked around in amazement. Some called to each other, eventually daring to stand again and look for our scattered comrades.

Sarah counted us from her knees as survivors staggered by. As I helped her to her feet, she asked, “Where’s Dalton? That stupid asshole – I don’t see him.”

The few scattered stragglers of our party eventually caught up with us as we cast up and down the length of the peak. But as the sun burned over the western ridge like a sliver of molten gold, we had to turn back, and Dalton was still nowhere to be found.

As luck would have it, we found a trio of grazing doe at the peak just as we made to head home. But there was no sport from the hunters this time, no thrill in the chase. They shot them down, I gave them a clean cut, they bled, and they died.

We all marched on, slowly, numbly, the carcasses of our quarry slung over our backs. A withered, black stretch of grass greeted our return to the site of our encounter with the Smoke. There was a heaviness in the air between us, as if the mist had never dissipated, and no more words were said in that place.

In the last, burning light of the day, I caught a glint among the chalky, sooted stones of that ruined slope. Curiosity got the better of me, and I stooped to examine it.

It was a brass chain of some sort, looped around… a pendant? Heart-shaped, with finer craftsmanship than we Survivors could ever manage. Some sort of locket, it seemed to me.

I opened it with a click, and inside was a small photo of Dalton and Adie, long before the Smoke ever came to our world. There was joy in their eyes I haven’t seen since.

“Dalton,” I whispered, choked with tears, “you idiot.”