Five

I pass by a hole in the street where a fire is burning, jetting out of the ground like the breath of a dragon. A ruptured gas main, I guess. I cross the street and edge past and even then I feel the heat on my face. Smoke billows out above me. At the end of the road I stop and read the map in a bus shelter. I am a few miles away from mine and Sharon’s house. I can make it before night comes.

Just then there is a loud noise. It echoes out across the city and before I can even think I have thrown myself flat on the ground. I go still, waiting. I look up.

What I see is a tower block. It’s still standing, despite the fact that huge chunks are missing from its side. I can see a cross-section of rooms, the patchwork of wallpapers oddly bright in the otherwise bleak landscape. Beds and tables teeter on the edge of falling. Girders thrust out into nothing. As I watch, a stream of rubble spills from one of the rents higher up on the building’s side. Something unfolds from the hole, stretches leathery wings and takes flight, swooping down and out of sight before the rubble it dislodged has landed. A Creature. One of the flying ones.

From what I’ve seen there are three different types of Creature. The first kind have wings, and the second kind walk on long, horny legs. They’re both vaguely humanoid in appearance. Long, flat arms that reach almost to the ground. Their faces eyeless, armoured, their skin the colour of blood and slimy and hard. They have mouths, and the mouths have teeth. I’ve seen one unhinge its jaw, spring its head open like a mantrap and snap down on some poor policeman’s arm. A clean break. Faster than you can blink.

The other type of Creature I’ve seen looks completely different. Like a maggot, but a million times the size. It has mouthparts, twitching constantly around its monstrous mouth, searching for food. They are wrecking machines, bulldozers. Food, to the maggot monsters, is anything. Buildings or bullets or cars or people.

What they all have in common is their speed. They move so fast it’s hard to follow. So fast that running is useless. I have seen this happen. I know. One second Sharon’s there and the next she’s gone.

I lie there in the street for almost half an hour, barely breathing, until I’m sure the flying Creature is gone. Then I get up, grab my bag of food, check my gun and scurry on through the silent streets like a bug in a crack in the earth.