When the World Ends

The sun was shining the day the world ended.

The sky was a bright, burning blue, not a single cloud in sight to hinder the mild summer heat. The grass was cool and soft under my toes, and a gentle breeze sent strands of hair dancing out of my braid. I could smell the scent of barbecue coming from my neighbor’s grill, hear the sounds of their three small children laughing and playing in the yard as they waited for their father to finish making their dinner.

My own father was just inside the open patio doors of our house, mixing together my mother’s favorite strawberry salad. I glanced over my shoulder, just in time to see my mother throw her head back and laugh at something he had said, her smile brighter than that relentless summer sun. I turned back to the yard just in time to avoid getting knocked over by our enormous Irish Wolfhound as he finally returned the ball I had thrown him.

“Easy, Killer,” I chided with a small laugh, taking the now-slobbery ball from him and launching it back into the yard. When I was twelve, I had actually named him Killer. I had thought it was a hilarious joke, because despite his mammoth size, there wasn’t a vicious bone in his body.

The moment was peaceful, and perfect, and so like the countless other summer days I’d spent in the home I was born in fifteen years ago. It never occurred to me to savor it.

It never occurred to me to brand the image of my mother’s smile into my memory. It never occurred to me to replay my father’s booming laugh in my head again and again until I could never forget the sound of it. It never occurred to me to relish that feeling of lightness, to remember what it was like to be unburdened and happy.

It never occurred to me that such an ordinary day would be the last normal one I ever had.

And when that shimmering sun was blotted out by them not five minutes later, I wished with everything in me that it had.

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Six Years Later

At times like this, I was really glad Killer had no problem living up to his name when he needed to.

“Good boy,” I rasped, spinning away from the one of them I had been fighting in time to see him clamp his jaws around the neck of the one that had been coming at my back. My once gentle, kind-spirited dog crunched down and shook, snapping the thing’s neck. Not to be outdone by my dog, I whirled back around and slashed out with my hunting knife. A second later, the other one of them crashed to its knees, throat spilling onto the ground.

Panting, I wiped the thing’s blood onto my dirt-splattered jeans and eyeballed Killer. “I win,” I taunted, gesturing to the two bodies at my feet and then the single one lying at his. He only let out a gaping yawn, unimpressed.

“Spoilsport,” I complained on a sigh, slipping my knife back into its sheath on my thigh. With no more immediate threats in sight, I cupped my hands over my mouth and sent a bird call into the cool night air. All clear. A moment later, a three-note chirp sounded back. All clear, headed your way.

Despite the dark blue blood now staining my clothes, tonight’s patrol had been relatively calm. Prior to the attack from those three others, Killer and I had been manning our section of the forest for nearly five hours without a single disturbance. After a minute or so, the two of us turned at the sound of Killian and Kyla’s approach.

If not for the fact that one was a boy and one was a girl, the Baker twins would be nearly identical. Both golden-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and gorgeous, as well as each being just a touch over six feet tall. The two were also attached at the hip, and always stationed on patrol together. Not to mention they were my best friends in this post-apocalyptic hell-hole.

“Only three, Anna?” Kyla teased, throwing her slender arm over my shoulders as she surveyed the bodies.

“We took down five,” Killian added, sticking out his tongue. Very mature, this lot.

“Baker Blood superiority,” they said in unison, fist-bumping over my head. I let out a rough laugh at their ridiculousness, even as my chest tightened at the mention of family. Without conscious thought, one hand drifted up to clutch my mother’s heart-shaped locket at my throat, the other going down to run over Killer’s furry head as we began the walk back to the compound. He was the only family I had left.

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The day they came—completely wiping out Chicago, DC, New York, LA, and countless other cities across the world during their initial invasion—my father took one look at the darkness spreading across the sky and told us we needed to run. Within a matter of minutes he had my mother and I loaded into the car and was peeling out of the driveway. The streets weren’t yet clogged with people seeking to do the same. Mostly, everyone just stood outside of their homes and peered up, confused as to what they were seeing. I don't know what sense told my father that we needed to move now, but I’m alive today because of it.

I don’t remember much of that long drive to our small cabin up in Michigan. I only remember staring out the car window at the ever-darkening sky and thinking, I always knew that aliens were real. My mother had thought so too.

How I wish we had been wrong.

Just like in every apocalypse movie I’d ever watched, the world descended into complete chaos after the others came. From the ancient TV in our cabin’s living room, the three of us watched as city after city was demolished. Whatever technology these people, these things possessed, our world’s forces didn’t stand a chance against them. Within a week, life as we knew it ceased to exist. Governments were in shambles, militaries barely making a dent. By week two, the others began to widen their net, moving on from mass aerial attacks to dispatching foot soldiers across entire countries. By week three, they had figured out that we were almost entirely, stupidly dependent on technology to communicate.

So they took it out.

No one exactly knows how they did it, but one day everything just... stopped. Phones, computers, radios, TVs, internet, electricity—gone. Humanity was left completely, horribly, in the dark. I don’t exactly know what happened after that, only that the world as I knew it was gone. So, so many people were dead in a matter of weeks, and I had no way of knowing if I would be next. No one did.

By week four, my family was desperate enough to venture outside of our cabin, all of the supplies we had managed to stock up during our fleeing finally gone. That’s when we first encountered one of them. It was also when we discovered that they were not a one-size-fits-all race. The main ones, the ones all over TV in those initial days, could almost pass as human. Bigger, probably around seven feet tall with eyes of the palest gold, but human in every other sense. Then there were what we started calling the grunts. Smaller, humanoid, but more skeletal. Their skin was a bluish-gray, their teeth razor sharp. Those were the ones lurking around every corner, and that’s what we encountered that day.

We were lucky my father was prepared with a shotgun, and all three of us survived that encounter. That same day, we found another cluster of survivors outside of an abandoned Walmart, and they led us to what used to be a hotel where they and several others were staying. We didn’t know it then, but that hotel would become the compound where a faction of the human resistance would set up base. Our new home. We also didn’t know that my father, being the ex-marine that he was, would rapidly climb the ranks and soon lead the entire faction. Then again, we didn’t know that he and my mother would only survive for another four years, either.

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Inside the compound, things were quiet, given that it was two minutes from midnight. People smiled and clapped me on the shoulder as I entered, my face still well known thanks to my parents even two years after their deaths. Just as I was about to enter my room and collapse onto my bed for some much-needed rest, Killian grasped my arm to stop me.

“It’s midnight,” he said with a smile.

“Happy twenty-first birthday, Anna,” Kyla finished, giving me a brief hug. “Now get some sleep to celebrate.”

“Thanks guys,” I replied, smiling as I finally shuffled into my room. I didn’t even bother to change out of my bloody clothes before I fell onto the stuffy mattress and fell into a deep sleep.

The morning of my twenty-first birthday started only five short hours later with Kyla, Killian, Killer, and I loading into one of the compound’s beat-up old Jeeps. Older cars, thank god, survived the tech black-out. Instead of going out to bars and buying my first legal drink as I would have before the world went to hell, I was celebrating my birthday by going on an hours-long supply run with the twins and my surprisingly ruthless dog.

“Alright ladies,” Killian announced from the driver’s seat. “Time to place our bets. As always, the rules are simple: each person bets the number of grunts they think they'll take out. The person farthest off in their bet by the end of the run does the other two’s chores around the compound for the next week.”

“And as always, I think I should get to count any grunts Killer takes out—”

My words were cut off by the world turning upside down for the second time.

One minute, we were driving under the hazy summer sky, the next a massive boom was shaking the ground and our Jeep was tumbling through the air. We rolled and rolled for what felt like an eternity, while I held on to Killer for dear life. Our Jeep finally came to a stop with a sickening crunch, my skull echoing the sound by slamming into the rear window. Then everything was black.

What could've been hours or minutes or days later, I slowly blinked open my eyes. I wasn’t in the Jeep anymore, but I could hear it burning a short distance away. I could smell it too. But when I turned my aching head to look, I finally noticed the figure standing over me.

It wasn’t a grunt.

No, it was much, much worse. Seven-towering-feet-of-corded-muscle-and-pale-gold-eyes worse.

“Hello, human,” the beautiful, terrible male thing purred. “You and your friends will be coming with me.”

This was the first time I had seen one of the human-looking others in person, and it was as terrifying as I always knew it would be. Distantly, I heard Killer whine as if in agreement.

Happy birthday to me.