The Event

The Event

The rain never stops. the thunder sounds like the sky is going to split apart at any moment and the ground constantly shakes when it rumbles. The lightning is not like anything anyone has ever seen before. brighter than daylight and strobing like an old time nightclub. There have been sounds eminating from the distance. We are all starting to believe that there must be creatures that have spawned from the event.

The event...Its been about 3 years now. The skys have been black and the storms constant. The only way we know the sun is still there is because we haven't frozen to death. Nobody has seen the sun it since it all happened.

It was a regular day for most, going about our business, going to work, going on vacation, some just driving to the store. I was shopping for my Daughter Sophia's birthday. She was turning 12. Not yet a teenager but she was growing into such an amazing little lady. The jewelry shop was quaint, quiet and i had found what i was looking for. She had been asking about a heart Shaped locket to hold a picture of her mother. My Late wife. We lost her just a year before. Sophia had been so strong and so brave and the only thing she asked for was a place to keep her mother close to her heart. The locket was perfect. She was going to love it.

I had just made my purchase when it hit. It was sudden, and so subtle at first. It was as if everything stopped. The wind stopped blowing. the birds stopped chirping. The clouds stopped moving. The ground suddenly shuttered and everyone assumed it was a mild earthquake. But it was in that silent moment, that stillness that seemed to shake everyone to the core, that it happened. The crack. The event. The sound heard from one hemisphere to the other. It was deafening. Ear shattering. The blue sky split wide open and the blackness rushed in. The clouds, the cold, the rain, the lightning and the thunder. Appearing from nowhere but bleeding into our world from the darkness that had just opened up in the sky. With the clouds and the rain and the storms came the most horrifying of all sounds. The growling, The screaming, the moaning of what we couldnt see but we could hear and sense. Creatures that were not from here. Monsters. Big Monsters. Gigantic.

Sophia was in school when it happened. I called her cell phone but all services were cut off. All the power gone. Everything that makes our lives as easy as it is was suddenly gone. Vehicles stopped running, planes fell from the sky, sattelites fell out of orbit. I ran amongst the chaos to find her but by the time i got to her school it was gone. like everything else, reduced to rubble. Its been 3 years and i still have not found her.

The rain that falls from the black sky is not like the rain we know. Evaporated Lake water dropped by clouds into our lakes and rivers.....this rain burns. This rain tears the flesh from your bones. The rain degrades and burns everything it touches and it has been seeping into the ground. Few were lucky enough to get out of its way and find shelter. Most of us survivors have moved deep underground. We are running out of resources.

A small faction of survivors showed up recently from the surface. They travelled through the subway tunnels mostly and used heavy steel sheets to protect them as they surfaced but even they lasted only moments before being reduced to brittle, pitted metal.

The meeting was exciting yet a grim reminder that we have less than we need to continue on for much longer. Food is nearly gone, Clean drinking water is getting scarce and our filtration systems are slowly rotting away with rust. The filters are designed to last months....not years.

When the survivors showed up i searched through them feverishly searching for my Sophia and just like the last group that showed up she was not amongst them. Still i have not given up.

The sounds of the Monsters has been growing louder and seemingly closer to us. We visit the sub surface weekly to listen for sounds of rescue, military, anything. But week after week, month after month, Nothing. Nothing but the sounds of creatures growing closer.

We decided to move south through the subway tunnels since our drinking water was nearly gone. We looked for ground water that was not contaminated with whatever it is falling from the clouds. As we were moving we heard what sounded like gunfire. Frightened, we positioned ourselves near the slanted, rotted stairway that leads to the surface through the station and heard the gunfire grew louder and faster. There was screaming and yelling and explosions followed by what sounded like a creature screaming and groaning. Somebody was out there. Somebody was fighting. But how? How are they out in the rain?

The gunfire ceased but it was followed by a crash that shook the entire station nearly apart. Dust and debris fell from the ceiling of the tunnel as the group from the surface ran down the stairs cheering and celebrating. The Monster they had been attacking, had been defeated and had fallen.

The group were clothed in what looked like Biohazard suits but the outer skin looked reinforced by some sort of a thick rubber. They had military grade weapons and were breathing through masks and oxygen tanks cloaked in sheets of the same material.

We rushed over to greet them and thats when i saw her. My Sophia. She looked different. She had grown and she had scars on her face. When she saw me she screamed and grabbed a hold of me. We hugged for what seemed like an eternity in that moment.

We sat and talked and she told me how she had escaped the school and had joined a group that had been looking fort survivors. Most of the group were from the military base just outside of town. They had been searching for survivors for years and fighting these awful creatures all this time. The groups leader spoke to us and described these creatures as being anywhere from 15 feet in height to over 200 feet in height and weighing as much as a city block full of apartment buildings. There was no information on why they were here or where they came from. The outlook was grim because the tear in our reality never closed and these creatures were still pouring through into our world and slowly filling up the surface. What started with a few dozen in our city had grown to hundreds quickly and was now in the thousands.

We had all been hoping for a heros ending where we would rise up and save the earth from this hostile invasion from what appeared to be another dimension, but we quickly realized that we were knocked down the food chain and were now the prey, hiding in our burrows from these predators from another world. The end of humanity as we knew it. I wonder if i will ever get the chance to give this Heart Shaped Locket to Sophia.