Chapter Text
Alex followed his mother through the crowd. They had just gotten off the plane, they were officially back in the U.S. Alex couldn’t understand why his mother had brought them back here. Neither of them had ever wanted to come back. And yet here they were. Alex had half a mind to get back on that plane and go back to France. But no, he wouldn’t last without her. He knew he couldn’t.
Alex was transfixed by the meteor. The grace and fury with which it fell, it burned through the sky. A sure sign of death. A beautiful end to an ugly world.
The creatures swarmed the city. People were screaming and running; Alex was held to the floor by his mother’s body. She was shaking violently, but her hand was like iron around his mouth.She was dragging them under a car. One of the creatures flew past them and as it passed it caught on his mother and dragged her along with it for a few feet before dropping her. The woman inside the car that his mother had been slammed against screamed. One of the creatures aimed itself at them. Alex watched. He couldn’t look away.
“Under the car! Abram!” His mother screamed. He scrambled under the car; the creature impacted the car and the women. Abram clamped his hands over his ears as he watched. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t look away.
Abram kept walking, he didn’t know how long he’d been walking. But he’d seen someone tear out of the city like they had somewhere they could actually go, so he’d been following their tire tracks. They had to lead somewhere, to a farm, to a bunker, or maybe nowhere. It didn’t matter to Abram, not really. He just kept walking.
Abram saw the bunker from a distance, it looked pretty secure. Maybe not super sound proof, but that had work-arounds. He continued towards it.
The last thing Abram had expected was for the farmer to take him in so easily. The farmer didn’t even question it, however as they were making their way downstairs into the bunker Abram’s legs gave out and he stumbled. The clang of his knee against the bunker’s metal stairs must have alerted one of the nearby creatures because it wasn’t long till it got there. The farmer managed to seal the door first but the horrible metal wrending sound made Abram’s heart race and his knees weak. He was trembling from head to toe, couldn’t breathe.
“Come on kid.” The farmer said, Abram forced himself to start moving forward.
Nathaniel couldn’t remember how long he’d stayed there, only that every night he got less and less sleep as he stayed with Hernandez. Soon, he decided he'd leave. He couldn’t stay there. Something in the back of his mind told him that Hernandez wouldn’t protect him, would sell him out to his father to keep himself alive. Nathaniel didn’t blame him, he would do the same thing in his position. Didn’t make it hurt any less when it happened though.
Hernandez had sold Nathaniel out; his father’s men, Lola and Romero, had come for him. Lola currently straddled his stomach, her knees pinning his arms as she dragged a serrated knife across his collarbone. She’d made a marred landscape of his arms and chest, and she was slowly. Laying on his back felt like laying on molten lava. Today just might double the number of scars I have. He thought to himself. His world was getting fuzzy at the edges. He heard his father’s voice. He vomited on the floor.
Hernandez was dead, Nathaniel couldn’t remember how he’d gotten away but now he stood in the doorway and screamed with as much force as he could summon. His father and his father’s men stumbled back as Nathaniel emptied his lungs to the sky. The creatures came; they were called the Angels of Death. And now for the fourth time in as many weeks, Nathaniel saw why. They came barreling down on the entrance and Nathaniel threw himself to the side landing as silently as he could. One of the creatures dug its claws into Nathaniel’s leg and the sickening sound of a bone snapping followed. Nathaniel tried and failed to draw in a breath to scream. The creature quickly moved on from him as a scream sounded in the bunker’s main room, followed by gunfire. He left and didn’t look back.
He didn’t make it far as his leg was still broken, but he slowly and carefully pried two pieces of wood from the chicken coup and using his torn up pant legs he made a halfway functional splint. He pushed himself to his feet and came face to face with a terrified, bleeding Mrs. Hernandez. I’m sorry, she mouthed. He gave her a dead look, and then began walking(limping) away.
Abram arrived at the hospital two days after the bunker incident and slowly, so very slowly, dug through it to find proper casting materials. He washed the leg then put the underlayer of mesh covering, then the soft lining, then the waterproof wet tape on the outside. He then dug through supply closets till he found some suitable crutches. He then set about putting together a travel pack he could live with. His duffle that he’d been traveling with for years was left behind in the bunker so he grabbed one out of the supply cabinets and started loading it up with what might be needed. Some antibiotics(just in case), food, water, and some changes of clothes from some of the abandoned stores. The streets were bloody and silent. Abram fought to keep his head on straight. Stay focused, stay quiet, stay hidden, and stay alive. He wasn’t surprised that it was his mother’s voice in the back of his head hissing the words at him. But they kept him moving nonetheless. They kept him moving for a very long time, it hurt sometimes.