The Living Buildings

Dana ran through the pine brush, trying not to split her raggedy bindle of goods. Perhaps this area had once been known as Oregon, or maybe it was Idaho or Nevada. All those labels were irrelevant now, as the entire countryside outside of a few coastal fortress cities had been the creatures’ hunting ground for two decades.

She clutched her prized tchotchke close—a brass heart-shaped locket and chain passed down in her family for a century; a tradition now sure to die with her. Dana did not care, of course, as long as she could push off that death by another day or two.

She hopped over a log in her old work camp fatigues and saw a long-abandoned country highway ahead. On either side of the road were remnants of the world before, like fishing tackle shops and motels with antlers on their signs. These were the sort of buildings Dana was used to from her childhood, the ones that didn’t spring to life and leave a trail of blood and bones in their wake.

At a fork in the road, she saw an all-too-familiar billboard and winced. It was the smiling, unshaved face of Gus Gerund, wearing the jeans and sportscoat of dressed-down Silicon Valley geniuses. Beneath his image was that corporate motto that had been plastered all around the world in the waning days: “solving the real estate crisis with a human touch at Gerund Genetics.” Behind Mr. Gerund, the billboard showed two apartment tower blocks with walls of pink skin and windows of cartilage.

It was a solution that seemed too good to be true at the time. Lumber, steel, and concrete had all faced record scarcity levels, and yet the need for more and more buildings to house the masses exploded. Enter Gerund with his miraculous buildings grown from human stem cells, bubbling out from the ground like the inflatable balloon houses at carnivals. Tenants soon learned to live in complexes with spinal columns for staircases, teeth for doors, and a central nervous system to control temperature and other mundane functions.

It had worked like a charm, at least for a year or so. Dana recalled moving into one of these Gerund tower blocks upon opening, thinking foolishly that the creepiest thing about it would be the uvula-esque light fixture that hung in her apartment. But the dream fell apart under the weight of a hundred little discrepancies that became too much to ignore. Some of her neighbors began to vanish after poking around the basements and byzantine hallways of the place, with management claiming they had all just got the itch for a vacation. In the nights after the first disappearances, Dana would hear churning and gurgling from deep within the building; the unmistakable sounds of digestion.

Then the story came from across the country of a Gerund condo complex that had sprouted bug-like legs and tore through its city. The news began to report on these isolated incidents cropping up in the hundreds, as the buildings devoured their inhabitants and started roaming the land for seconds. By the time authorities grasped the size of the threat, it was too late, especially since government and military had been some of the biggest adopters of Gerund’s innovations.

As Dana was stuck in a standstill of reminiscence, she felt the earth shake beneath her. On a wooded hillside far behind her, she saw the tips of trees sway and a hundred crows fly away in a panic.

“Keep running,” she dictated to herself, the only advice that mattered now. “Keep running.”

What she had hoped was a freak earthquake was now greeted by similar ponderous thuds—thump, thump, thump. The slow footsteps of the beast reverberated through the asphalt, sending foxes and raccoons living out of derelict cars scurrying away. Dana put one blistered foot in front of the other, ignoring the pain as she ran. Something snagged her leg and sent her crashing into the tarmac, as she barely shielded her face in her time. She turned around to see that it was a human ribcage that had caught her foot, itself snagged to the cracked pavement by weeds.

Dana freed herself and resumed her jaunt forward, only to be stopped dead by the sight that laid on the horizon. About a half mile ahead the road straddled by forest entered a wide open valley, where the first working car Dana had seen in years was accelerating towards the point where the sunset met the land. Just as it approached the crest of a hill to depart the far end of the valley, a horrible flesh-colored tendril reached out from over the skyline to lift it into the air. A roaming four-story building came into view, straddling the earth on its bony tripod legs. With the other of its two tentacle arms, it wrapped around the van in midair and began to twist the metal into pieces. With a bit of effort the beast snapped the vehicle in half as if it were shellfish, before holding one of the halves in front of its gaping maw and shaking it viciously. Dana watched in disgust as several passengers tumbled out of the car and into the fang-lined mouth where there had once been a door and foyer.

As she picked herself up, Dana realized that certain death lay both ahead and behind her—the beast chasing after her was still stomping along interminably. Rather than trekking on forwards or backwards, she cut left into the forest, hoping to vanish into the canopy. Once again she was hopping over mossy stumps and rocks, back in the thicket where she felt most safe from becoming a meal.

The woman stopped to catch her breath on a fern-covered log and reached into her bag for the canteen. Her arm caused her shirt to brush against her neck, the sensation making her realize that something was missing—the feeling of a brass chain around her neckline. Pawing at it desperately, the horrible thought of her locket necklace being gone burned in her mind. She spun around looking at her surroundings for any stray piece of metal before it dawned on her that it must have come loose when she was tripped by those bones on the road.

She had lost so many keepsakes and heirlooms over her twenty years of running, among them photos, books, and cheesy souvenirs. But the brass locket had always been different, as it was her most tangible connection to a family long dead and un-mourned. In her lowest moments, Dana would stroke its patchy metalwork and be transported back to a world that was now just flickers of memory.

Dana curled up into a ball on the forest floor and began to weep, or the closest thing to it considering her state of exhaustion. Despair and nausea rolled over her, the feeling of a punch to the gut she knew so well from brawls with other scavengers. So many other desperate people had come and go in her life of travels, but that stupid little hunk of brass was something approximating a friend to her. She wondered if she could ever find anything else like it to motivate her when all seemed lost.

Her tears were interrupted by that awful sound that had been following her down the highway—thump, thump. Before she was even up from her prone position, she noticed the stomps were getting not just louder but less spaced out as well. The monster’s methodical walk turned into a jog, then a pounding run. The sound of squirrels and birds darting out of their nests became cacophonous as whole trees snapped underneath the creature’s girth. Somehow, for some reason, her pursuer had followed her tracks through the woods.

Dana was frozen in fear as the form of the building became clear through the treetops. It used its two massive tendrils to bat away the remaining pines, creating a wide-open clearing within seconds. The thing had once been a six-story office complex but was now a battle weapon all scarred and pockmarked like the skin of a hard-living human. The fleshy building panted as it surveyed its lone prey, shivering in a heap. She shut her eyes and held her head in her hands, hoping that the worst would be over within seconds.

But instead of being hoisted into its mouth, nothing happened. Dana peeked through her fingers as she heard the building let out a long, labored groan not unlike whale song. It slowly unfurled its tendril arm towards her, before it dropped something small and shiny from its clutches. Sitting there on the floor of pine needles was the very brass locket she had lost.

Mouth agape and close to fainting, Dana watched as the bloodthirsty beast gently turned around and stomped out of the forest, as if its mission were complete. With shaking fingers, she picked up her necklace and put it back on, cradling the locket with her thumb for security.

In all her years on the run, she had often counted on the kindness of strangers to survive—the man who hid her from bandits, the commune farmer who shared his last sack of beans with her, the sympathetic guard who freed her from the San Diego labor camp for no real reason. But never in her life had she thought to look for empathy in the very beasts that sought to destroy her.

Dana smiled, realizing that even twenty years past the end of the world, there were still surprises in this world that could blindside her.