Marin's Dale

3

"Audreeeeeey!"

Tyler was shouting at the top of his lungs. He knew he had parked right out front. The car should've been right near the buses, why wasn't it?

"Audreeeeeeeeeeeeeey!"

Tyler huffed. The feeling in his arms had arrived. Not the good feeling, where they were warm and fuzzy or nice and limber. This was the type of feel that ignited through your tendons and muscles and vessels as if a trillion tiny spinning blades were unleashed. You had to tell yourself that the feeling didn't exist, even as it grew worse and worse, and you swore your limbs would literally explode.

Explode

Tyler remembered the kids by the field. The ones with the heads, their faces burst like melons. He remembered the man at the mall, dead in his car, his forehead blown open like some kind of demolition.

And then a searing headache. Tyler fell to one knee. He stopped himself with a single trembling hand, pleading, gasping, and nearly vomiting with the effort. And then he was on the ground completely.

He was on his back, and the great giant scar in the sky floated above. It was flashing a hundred different reds and pinks—the world's most mesmerizing disco ball. Tyler thought to himself then, as the world above him was consumed, that perhaps it was better now than ever.

His eyes sunk into his skull and the belly of the heavens delivered its most brilliant gore. Things were easier now, perhaps. There was no struggle, and the warmth of the stars was coming clear. Tyler didn't need to fight anymore. He could choose to, but he didn't have to; he was tired, his spirit was draining.

Was he the only one left?

The crimson fluid, deeper red than red, thick like molasses, spilled from his ears.

And then he jerked up. Tyler was to his feet as quickly as he had been leveled. No. He couldn't end now, not here, not so... pathetically. The human mind could overcome anything.

It wasn't time to surrender; this here story had a tale to tell, and Tyler wanted to see it through.

               ###

The scar in the sky blazed several times. And faded. There was one final, luminous burst. So bright, that for an infinitesimal moment, all was engulfed in gilded red.

Then it was gone. No trace of it ever having been.

The Sun's tendrils bled across the cusp of the mountainous backdrop. A shadow stretched over the falsely quaint Marin's Dale, like a long, smothering glove. The sun disappeared behind the encircling peaks.

                ###

The town was not empty.

And the lights were on. In every empty building, the lights were on.

Haggard and bleary-eyed, they moved. They swayed from side to side and behind them, loosely in their clutches, mutilated corpses flopped like fish.

Some of them carried shovels, silently stopping to unearth makeshift graves. They were not consenting, but they proceeded nonetheless, because it was to be done. Because it was no longer up to them.

The homo sapien is a pitiful specimen

The Man with the boots moved by. Those, with their bloodied relatives and their own leaking, drizzling blood-laced expressions, looked up. Their eyes; their worn, otherworldly looks, spoke volumes about their futures.

These humans would not move on. The Harvest would commence without them.

The Man with the boots raised two phalanges in the air. At the intersection, surrounded by vehicles stopped and broken, he gave a quick touch. Just a fleeting, innocuous touch; right to his forehead.