LUNA HELEN

  Leaping over the creature to finish it, the other bipedal creature used its tongue to grab his neck, hurling him against a tree. The impact shattered much of the trunk, which was hard as stone. I didn’t know how anyone could survive that, but long ago I had already known he wasn’t human. Even so, I was still surprised and frightened by what I was seeing.

  The creature began to pull him, but he locked in place, as if his body were becoming heavier. The creature strained, but nothing seemed to work. Then, with a kick, Saklas wrapped the creature’s tongue around his foot, pressing it against the ground. The movement caused it to slam face-first into the earth.

  He advanced, but once again was prevented from finishing it. The creature — which I now understood was only one, though its body was divided — burrowed into the ground, keeping one half at each end. Then it attacked from above. Its size prevented me from seeing what happened to Saklas.

  Until I noticed the creature writhing, trying to pull what I believed was its own tail. It began to grunt in desperation. I didn’t understand what was happening until something ruptured: the half of its body that was over Saklas exploded into a fountain of blood.

  Saklas emerged holding the two halves of the creature’s tail. With a brutal movement, he split it open up to the middle of its body and began dragging it out of the earth. The creature writhed, trying to escape. Even that grotesque thing could feel fear.

  The contrast of that man covered in blood, tearing apart a creature easily more than three times his size, was something I couldn’t explain in words — only feel. I trembled. My heart raced. I wanted to run, far from all of it, but my body wouldn’t respond. I feared that once he finished with them, we would be next.

  “We need to leave.”

  I looked at Erick. His face was confused; he still stood frozen. I also looked at Carlos. The man was indifferent to everything, sitting on the ground as if detached from what was happening around him.

  I gathered my strength and walked toward Erick.

  “What happened?” he asked, nervous.

  “S-Saklas… he’s out there.”

  My jaw was so tense it was difficult to speak.

  “What? How? How could he have survived out there? Even him… how is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s out there, annihilating a trio of creatures. Each one must be over seven meters tall.”

  “How is that possible? Let me see.”

  He brushed past me.

  “Wait. We have to go.”

  He ignored me and kept walking toward the crack in the tree trunk.

  ERICK HELEN

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Now I understood Luna’s reaction.

  There was the corpse of a creature with countless legs, completely destroyed. Saklas was walking toward the other two while black smoke escaped from his mouth. It was a vision from another world, something I could never have imagined — and perhaps no one could.

  The other two creatures were visibly afraid, retreating, their bodies hunched. I had never seen fear in those things. I had never imagined they were capable of it.

  The thin creature with the hanging arm was the most terrified. Its face was covered in blood, completely disfigured, one eye missing. I didn’t know how it was still alive in that state — and I wasn’t even remotely willing to try to make sense of it.

  It didn’t take long for him to finish them.

  Now I understood Luna’s desperation.

  I turned around. She was talking to Carlos, trying to convince him to leave, but he insisted he would stay. He said he would find Carla. I understood his pain, but it made no sense. Though, deep down, none of this did. So how could I judge him?

  “Luna, sister.”

  I placed my hand on her shoulder. She was still trying to persuade him. When she turned to me, I shook my head no.

  “Let him. We’ll leave at dawn. With luck, he or those things will be busy with each other…”

  I said it without any certainty. But what chance would we have out there, in that darkness?

  The three of us sat on the ground, waiting for time to pass. Tired. Silent. Fear and insecurity hung in the air. No one spoke.

  Part of me still wondered whether my former “self” would be useful in that situation… or just another problem. I still hadn’t gotten used to being “normal.”

  I looked again at my hands. My white skin, with no sign of those things running beneath it. I no longer felt my chest burning. The paranoia that I might turn into one of those creatures at any moment had lessened… at least partially.

  I still feared this would be our end.

  We are so fragile before these things. Just a little more exposure to the miasma of a grade 2 creature or higher would be enough for us to stop being human — or simply explode in pyroptosis, as if the flesh itself could not withstand what the mind cannot comprehend.

  Thinking about it didn’t help. It only deepened the feeling of insignificance.

  We were like ants in a world of giants.

  —

  A sound pulled me from my melancholy.

  Something I knew well.

  Vehicles.

  The sound of engines began approaching. Who would be out there? And why?

  I looked at Luna. She had the same expression of surprise.

  We ran to look. There were about four vehicles.

  On impulse, I shouted. I didn’t think about what it could mean. Sometimes, in situations like this, people can be worse than any of those monsters. But it was a shot in the dark.

  One of the vehicles stopped.

  My heart pounded. It felt like it would leap out of my chest.

  Come on, Erick. You’re a soldier. Calm down. Posture.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Luna, stay here. Don’t make a sound. Don’t come out until I give you a signal.”

  I pulled aside the piece of tree we used as a door. One of the vehicles cast a beam of light in my direction. I walked forward with my hands raised.

  Two armed men stepped out.

  “Hold on… a human? So this is the guy we were looking for?” the taller man asked the shorter one.

  I still couldn’t see their faces clearly, only two silhouettes.

  “I don’t think so. Look at his clothes. Acrox military uniform,” the shorter one replied, his voice softer and calmer.

  “Oh, so one of the piggies got lost in the woods. That’s the second one today. At this rate we can open a farm, haha.”

  He laughed mockingly.

  I kept approaching and could see them more clearly.

  The tall man was Black, strong, with a dark beard and braids in his hair. He wore a brown and green military uniform, unbuttoned over the shoulders, with a dark green shirt underneath. On his armband, a sickle and hammer engraved.

  I had heard of them: Red Needles, an anarcho-communist military group. But what were they doing there?

  The other man was shorter, about 1.70 meters tall. Also Black, with white patches on his face and hair. One eye was blue, contrasting with the other. He looked barely over twenty. His expression was calm and calculating. He wore the same uniform, buttoned up to the neck. His posture was more rigid — which made me even more uncomfortable.

  “Hey, you, kid. What are you doing here? What the hell happened for you to be showing up in this forest?”

  He spoke in the plural.

  Did they know I wasn’t alone?

  “There was an incident at Acrox’s central facilities. I had to flee… and ended up getting lost in the forest.”

  I summarized what had happened.

  “So the piggies really are screwed, huh. Hey, Kolá, do you know what the woman said about this?”

  “No. They just found her in a tree. No further details.”

  Woman… tree?

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Erick. Erick Helen. But what woman are you talking about? Tree? What do you mean?”

  “A Black woman, short hair, around forty years old. Do you know her?”

  Before I could answer, Carlos came out from inside the tree.

  “CARLA! WHERE IS SHE? IS SHE OKAY?”

  He shouted. Luna tried to hold him back, but couldn’t.

  “Well, well… looks like you’re not alone,” the shorter man said.

  I grabbed Carlos before he did something stupid.

  “Carla… where is she? Where is my sister?”

  “Oh, so the woman is your sister. She’s not with us. Another unit found her. We don’t have information about her condition. Only that she was on top of a tree.”

  “Please, take me to her. I need to see her.”

  “We can do that. But not now. We’re looking for someone.”

  “Alright… I’ll go.”

  Carlos looked at us, waiting for an answer.

  There wasn’t much to think about.

  “We’re going too,” Luna said, stepping forward.