‘Why isn’t hiding an option?’ he thought. ‘Why isn’t it fight, flight, or hide?’ His breathing was heavy and erratic, as he was trying to keep it as quiet as possible. ‘Oh, what does it matter? If this is the end, I probably deserve it. I just sat back and watched while everything went to hell, and by the time I realized what was happening, my chance to do anything about it was long gone.’

 He couldn’t see anything from his new-found haven that was an overturned husk of an automobile. All of his concentration that was not spent on muting his breathing was spent resisting the urge to get up and take a quick peek of his surroundings. Unable to see or hear anything that might give him the slightest clue as to whether he was safe or not, the man simply sat as quietly as he could, hiding like a mouse in its hole.

Lost in his thoughts and without any awareness of the passing time, the man was finally prodded into consciousness by the sky turning a dark hue of orange. Evidently he had been there a long time, because as far as he knew it wasn’t anywhere near sunset when he got there. He decided he should finally embark from his shelter, figuring the danger must have passed by now. ‘I should be close enough to make it by sundown. If I’m not, then I’ll just have to find some place to sleep for the night, because there’s no way I’ll be able to find my way in the dark.’

He found the apartment complex he was looking for with only a few minutes of sunlight left, and quickly climbed the stairs to the top floor. He arrived at apartment 504 and knocked on the door, hoping to make it to bed with as little conversation as possible. After a few moments the door opened. A slender, fair skinned woman with long black hair was standing in the doorway, looking like she was trying to decide whether or not to hit him. She made up her mind, and hit him. It was a kind-hearted gesture, though, because if she had really been upset it wouldn’t have been with an open hand.

“Are you ok?” she asked in her faint British accent. Despite moving to the states in her mid twenties it never did go away completely.

“I’m fine. Just tired,” he said as he attempted to move past her and toward his bed, trying to keep conversation to a minimum.

“Then would you mind explaining just what in the hell you were thinking? I explicitly told you to stay here. I was only gone for 10 minutes for god’s sake, you’re like a child.” She said as the man sat down on the couch that he used as a bed.

“And I explicitly told you that I need my laptop. With the net down, we need some way to find other people. We can’t just keep blundering about without any idea what we’re doing,” He said as he rolled out a mat with a keyboard on it and the holographic screen appeared.

“And how exactly is your laptop supposed to help with that if the net is down?”

“This building is ancient. It should still have a WiFi router somewhere that people would have used to wirelessly access the internet. I can use the router to send out a signal, and if I get any feedback it means there’s an active computer somewhere near here. And hopefully that means there’s a corresponding active person…”

“Well how long would that take? Because I’m not so sure we can keep staying here. When I went out looking for supplies today I saw a huge group of deer running through the streets. The closest place deer could possibly live is hundreds of miles north of here. They’re running from something Adam. Probably the same thing we were running from when we came here. There’s no evidence of those things that were on the news have been here, so why is this place abandoned anyway? We shouldn’t stay here any longer than we have to.”

“Yeah I had to go pretty far to get my laptop from my office, and I saw a few small ones, only about dog sized. Anyway I’ve already started broadcasting the signal. I’ll leave it running over night. I’m going to go to bed now, so turn off the lights on your way out.”

“You saw some!? We’re getting out of here first thing in the morning, whether your computer finds anything or not!”

“Fine, but you’re overreacting. It was only two, and they were small.”

“They won’t be small for long…” she said under her breath as she turned off the lights and left the room.

Adam was exhausted, but of course he couldn’t get any sleep. He hadn’t had a real night of sleep for weeks. All he could think about was how this whole mess was at least partially his fault. There was little merit to this line of reasoning, but self pity and guilt are hardly ever rational emotions.

‘There were hundreds of us on that damn ship, and not one of us thought for even a second that maybe we should take the time to find out exactly what we were doing before jumping in head first? No, we were too preoccupied planning what to do with all our money once we got home and were heralded as heroes. With an act of worldwide human cooperation never seen before in human history, all we managed to do was thoroughly screw ourselves.’

Adam had been part of an expedition of sorts two months earlier. He was a quantum drive engineer on the Starship Harbinger, the first ever human vessel capable of traveling outside the solar system. Vital resources on Earth, primarily precious metals, had been consumed at an exponentially increasing rate for about a century. Humankind finally realized that if they wanted to sustain their current lifestyle, they would have to find more. And that’s where Iota-734-B came in. A planet close to the rim of the Milky Way that was somehow comprised not of rock or gasses like every other planet humans had ever discovered, but of metals and metalloids in an extraordinarily pure state. Ignoring the fact that this phenomenon should be completely and utterly impossible, world leaders across the globe began work on the Starship Harbinger within 2 days of the planet’s discovery.

‘The ultimate get-rich-quick scheme is what it was. A few billion educated people in the world these days, and not a single one of them took notice of the fact that this planet was smack in the middle of the habitable zone of its star. Not until those habitants started consuming everything in sight when we brought them home with us, that is.’

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. The window on the far side of the room suddenly shattered. Adam looked up to see one of the creatures he was just thinking about, flying straight at him. It was a grotesque amalgamation of its recent prey. It had the body and two sets of wings of large ravens, with the head and legs of some kind of house cat, and its tail appeared to be an entire king snake. Its jaws were unhinged as it dove straight at Adam. He barely managed to smack it out of the air with a cushion.

Operating on pure instinct and adrenalin at this point, Adam got up and made a mad dash for the door while yelling, “Lizzy! Run! Run!” He crashed through the door into Lizzy’s room. She was already up and running toward him, grabbing a backpack as she ran. The two of them sprinted through the exit of the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind them. As they were running down the stairs of the apartment complex, Lizzy was fumbling with her backpack, stuffing in Adam’s laptop that she had grabbed on the way out. They were now at the first floor, running across the lobby toward the exit, when Adam tackled Lizzy. Before she could even react the creature slammed into the wall right in front of them, having missed its two targets.

In one swift motion, Lizzy shoved Adam off of her, removed her hand from the backpack carrying a huge kitchen knife from the apartment, lunged at the monster, and stabbed it right in the head. The creature didn’t even flinch at what should have been a fatal blow, but instead started thrashing until it threw Lizzy off. It pounced on her and made an attempt for her jugular, but its jaw did not appear to be functioning any longer. Upon realizing this, the creature burst through the glass door just behind it and flew away, with the kitchen knife still stuck in its, or rather the poor cat’s, skull.

Lizzy got up and walked over to Adam, who was still lying on the ground with his eyes wide open and extended a hand to help him up. Still stunned, he grabbed her bloodied hand and she pulled him to his feet.

“You alright?” she asked him as she turned to pick up her backpack.

The noise he made in response was somewhere between a squeal and a cough. After clearing his throat he said “Yeah I think so. You? Your hand’s all bloody.”

“Yeah but I don’t think it’s my blood. Anyway we need to keep moving. From what they said on the news about those things I doubt that thing was alone.”

“Alright hand me my laptop. I’ll see if my scan got any hits so we can at least have a direction to go.”

“No, we need to move. I wouldn’t be surprised if all that commotion attracted more of those things to the building. We’ll find somewhere to hide and then we can check the computer.”

“Somewhere to hide. Great. I guess I’ll follow you then.”

The two of them left the building and immediately ran across the street. Most of the street lights were still working, and they had to be careful to avoid them on their way to the edge of the town. Where the buildings stopped, the wild grass began, and the border between the two was oddly straight. The two stood there for a moment, looking at what was before them. A wide open field with absolutely no cover followed by a large hill, and neither of them knew what was beyond that. After their moment of hesitation, Lizzy started running across the field as quickly as she could, and a second later Adam was chasing after her. Running through it, the field seemed much larger to Adam than it did when he was looking at it from the street. After what seemed like an excessively long time, Adam reached the top of the hill where he found Lizzy lying in the grass, looking back toward the town they had just come from. Adam followed her gaze and saw what had caught her attention. There were about two dozen of those creatures ravaging the town, eating everything in sight, even the buildings and street lamps.

Because of the distance he couldn’t make out much detail. What he could tell was that none of them appeared to be the same size or shape. Adam simply stood there on the hill, staring at what resembled a nightmare more than the town they had just left.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to outrun them…” Lizzy said after a minute or two.

“Then what are we supposed to do? We can’t hide, they’re eating everything. Including the buildings.”

“There is one place we can hide… Look at the direction they came from. It’s totally barren, so why would they backtrack at all? If we can circle around behind them, then we should be safe.”

“Yeah, but we’ll starve. You said so yourself, they don’t leave anything behind. I don’t see how that improves our situation at all.”

“Ok, fine. Do you have any ideas?”

“Maybe. Hand me my computer real quick.”

She got the computer out of her backpack and handed it to him. “Whatever you’re doing, it needs to be quick. It won’t take those things long to move on.”

Adam took the computer and booted it up. Once it was on, he went straight to checking the results from the scan he had started when he reached the apartment. “Uh-Oh… The only result I got is way out at the edge of the scanning range. And it’s straight through that path of destruction that these things left behind them. About 30 miles from here. And all the scan picks up is an active computer, there’s not necessarily any people there.”

“I think we have to take that chance. I have a bit of food in the backpack. Hopefully it’ll be enough to get us there.”

“And hopefully there will actually be something there…” And with that, Adam put the computer back in Lizzy’s backpack and they started off on their wide arc to get around the monsters.

Since the creatures were so preoccupied with feeding, it was fairly easy to slip past them without incident. They made it into what could only be called the wasteland left behind the creature’s feeding frenzy. The earth was stripped completely clean. Not a single animal or plant could be seen save for the creatures on the horizon behind them. They decided to continue walking as long as there was enough sunlight to see by. When the sun finally slipped down beyond the horizon, they laid down on the barren earth and quickly fell asleep despite having no blankets or bedding of any kind. They were exhausted, and didn’t say anything beyond “Good night.”

When they awoke, they ate a small bit of food and each took a water bottle from Lizzy’s backpack, and then continued walking. They could no longer see the town behind them, and everything looked mostly the same in every direction. At mid-day, they stopped to eat a bit more and check Adam’s computer to make sure they were heading in the right direction. They were, but their meager progress was fairly demoralizing. It would probably take another day or two to get there, and they weren’t sure there would be enough food to make the journey. They didn’t have much of a choice at this point, so they continued on.

The next day, shortly after they set out walking, they saw something moving, which was a stark contrast against the motionless desolation that surrounded them.

“What… what is that?” Adam asked as he squinted his eyes in an attempt to identify the shape.

“I have no idea, but we should definitely check it out. Maybe it’s something we can eat. Or maybe it’s a person.” Adam nodded in assent and the two changed their course to go investigate the distant shape. When they were about 20 yards from it, they finally realized what it was: one of the monsters. It was about the size of a small horse, and had the head of a wolf. Adam was about to start running, but then he realized the creature was limping and obviously in some kind of delirium. There was definitely something wrong with it, but Adam couldn’t see any wounds on it, so he figured whatever the problem was must be internal.

“Why would it be all by itself all the way out in the middle of nowhere with no food?” Lizzy asked.

“Well there’s obviously something wrong with it, so it probably just couldn’t keep up and got left behind by the others… The question is what’s wrong with it?”

“I’m not sure, but it doesn’t even seem to notice us… Do you think we could eat it?”

Adam looked at her with a mix of shock and disgust. “Are you kidding!? You want to eat some bizarre monster that comes from an entirely different planet? Not to mention it looks sick, and we’d probably catch whatever it has.”

“Adam we are completely out of food. And besides us this things is in all likelihood the only living thing out here.”

“We must be close to that signal by now. Let me see my computer and I’ll check.” Lizzy pulled the computer out of the backpack and handed it to him. “We’re almost there. Only about half a mile to go. And the fact that the signal is still there means there’s almost definitely someone there. If there weren’t, then the computer creating the signal would have died by now. Even if it were plugged in it would have gone into sleep mode and that would stop the signal as well. And the signal isn’t moving, which means whoever is there is staying there, which probably means they have some kind of food stockpile. So I don’t think we have to risk eating a dying alien.”

“I really hope you’re right… What should we do with this thing? Just leave it here?”

“Yeah I don’t see what else we can do. We don’t have any weapons, so I don’t think we could kill it. And there’s no food around here, so it’ll probably just starve out here.”

“Alright, I guess we should get going then.”

As they continued on in the direction indicated by the blinking dot on Adam’s computer screen, the sun continued to travel westward in the sky. At about three in the afternoon, as indicated by the computer, Lizzy nudged Adam and pointed. About 300 yards ahead of them, they saw something incredible. Grass, as well as a few small trees.

“Oh my god… I never knew some measly old grass could make a person so happy,” Adam said while he continued to stare in astonishment.

“And this means there could definitely be someone living out here. How close are we?” Lizzy asked, having to poke Adam to get him to stop staring and check the computer.

“Just a few hundred more yards. Whatever it is we’re looking for we should be able to reach it well before sunset.”

Lizzy didn’t say anything in response but instead just started walking again, with Adam right behind her. It was only about a half hour later that they saw what they presumably came all this way seeking. Just at the far reaches of their field of view were a few small huts made of wood, nestled against a small mountainside. Lizzy and Adam exchanged an ecstatic glance with each other and immediately began running toward the buildings. When they reached the buildings, Lizzy started to call out to see if there was anyone there. But, Adam just looked intently at his laptop, steadily walking toward the exact spot where the signal they had been chasing all this time was coming from. He also noticed that there were now more visible readings within range of his computer’s scan. He came to the door of one of the huts just as it was opened. In the doorway stood a man about six feet tall and in about his mid fifties, with a menacing looking hatchet in his hand, but a massive and welcoming smile on his face. The man hung the hatchet on the wall just by the door and came out to greet Adam and Lizzy.

“Well… Hello there,” was all the man said, extending a hand to Adam. He welcomed both Adam and Lizzy into the building he had come out of and treated them to some canned beans and bottled water. Over the food they talked, and the pair explained to their host all that had happened in the last few days. The man introduced himself as Roger. He said he had been living here with his son and another family of three, but they were all currently out gathering food or firewood or other supplies at the moment. The rest of the population of the small village had fled when they heard of the monsters nearby back when the news was still running. Roger and the others didn’t have anywhere to go, so they just decided to stay and take their chances. And for some reason the creatures had simply passed them by, continuing on in a different direction, at least for now.

Roger went on to say that he was a biologist and had been studying the strange creatures from what little news footage was available, but couldn’t get much from the few photos he could find.

“Actually we saw one by itself on our way here,” Lizzy told him. “It was dying and could hardly move, so it’s probably still close to the spot where we saw it. But it was about the size of a horse, so I don’t think we could bring it back here even if we could find it…”

“You actually saw one up close!? Where? How far?” Roger pleaded.

“I don’t know, maybe half a mile, but it’s big, there’s no way you could transport it anywhere.” Lizzy replied.

“We have a small pickup truck that still runs. My son is using it right now, but when he comes back, I would like you to take me to where you found the beast. Would you do that for me?”

“Yes, we can do that, but why are you so interested in these things anyway? All you really need to know is that they consume everything, and in just a few short years our planet will be just as barren as the one they came from.” Adam asked with a scrutinizing glare.

“That’s undoubtedly a true statement, unless we can stop them of course. Know your enemy and all that. But the fact is, nothing anyone has tried has been effective against the little bastards. Well, not so little any more I’ll wager. But if what you say is true, there’s a specimen out there just waiting to be examined. And what’s more, there’s something that managed to harm, maybe even kill it. If we can find out what that is, we just might have a shot at containing the damage.” Roger explained, surprised that he had to do so.

“I’d say that’s optimistic, but we obviously don’t have anything more to lose,” Adam replied, deep in thought.

When Roger’s son and the family of three returned in the pickup truck, introductions were made, Adam and Lizzy were given one of the empty buildings to sleep in, and everyone went to bed exhausted. The next morning at the crack of dawn, Roger woke Adam and Lizzy, and prompted them to join him in the truck. They drove out into the wasteland and found the creature, now dead, in less than an hour. The three of them hauled its carcass up into the bed of the truck and returned to the small cluster of buildings before anyone else was up. Roger jumped from the truck as soon as they arrived and immediately began to poke and prod at the creature without even removing it from the truck bed.

Like all the pictures he had seen, it had body parts from various familiar creatures, presumably ones that it had eaten. These things could somehow attach parts of their prey to themselves, still functioning, as a way to rapidly adapt to their environment. This one also had a hard concrete and stone shell covering its entire body except for its mouth, which was firmly shut. Roger pried open the jaws, which appeared to have come from a wolf, and had no idea what it was that he found inside. Adam had been silently watching him work, and spoke up when he noticed Roger looking confused.

“It’s a capacitor. It tried to eat some kind of capacitor. When he broke the metal guard surrounding it, he got a massive shock that probably caused his muscles to contract, forcing his jaw to clamp down even harder on the thing.” Adam explained.

“I see… It’s possible that this is what killed it, but this device doesn’t look big enough to deliver too much of a shock.” Roger said, mostly to himself

“No, it wouldn’t. It would probably knock out a person, but it shouldn’t have been anything more than uncomfortable for something of this size. Certainly not lethal.” Adam responded.

“Well… I suppose it’s time to begin the autopsy then.” Roger said with a slight tone of excitement in his voice.

“I’ll just be leaving then,” Lizzy said as she ducked back into the building she and Adam slept in. Adam stayed to help Roger with the massive creature, and the two continued working for the majority of the day. Lizzy came back out to check on them a few hours before sunset, averting her gaze from the now bloody bed of the pickup truck.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked, hoping she wouldn’t regret doing so.

“Actually yes,” Roger began. “The nervous system. The equivalent of the brain is this small organ near the center. Compared to most creatures on Earth, the electrical signal it fires from the neurons are tiny, about one millionth of the strength of those in the human brain. To compensate, the nerves have a ridiculously low resistance to electricity. I don’t even know what it is the nerves are made of to be honest. But as a result of this, the relatively small voltage from the capacitor did damage comparable to a human being struck by bolt of lightning. Except Adam says this discharge would have lasted several thousand times longer than a lightning bolt.”

“So what you’re saying is you’ve found a way to kill them?” Lizzy asked.

“Well yes, but I’m not sure feeding them capacitors is going to be an efficient enough way to stop them…” Roger replied.

“Still, I’m sure we can figure out some kind of way to deliver a voltage to them. All we have to do is get it inside their mouth.” Adam said as he started to rummage through Roger’s belongings. “Here. A harpoon gun. Does this thing still work?”

“It should,” Roger said, obviously not sure where this was going.

“If we can somehow get the harpoon to deliver a charge, that would be more than enough voltage to kill one of these things, regardless of its size. Roger, are there any electrical appliances that we could take apart? We need a capacitor small enough to attach to the harpoon.”

“Well, the news isn’t running any more so I suppose I don’t need that television any more.”

“Great. Now I’ll just need a screw driver, some scissors, and duct tape.” After roger brought him the television set and the tools he had requested, Adam began working pulling apart the TV and attaching its capacitor to the harpoon, along with two wires from the TV acting as electrodes.

“Well, in theory we should be able to kill them now, provided we can get a bulls eye straight into the mouth, but there’s only a few of us, so I’m not sure how this is supposed to fit into your grand scheme Roger.”

“Well now all we have to do is share our new-found knowledge with anyone and everyone we can.” The next morning, Adam, Lizzy, and Roger examined Adam’s computer to determine their first destination. All seven of them then piled into the pickup truck and headed toward the nearest blinking dot on Adam’s computer screen.