The panels I collected found a new home in the ground before my feet; now a forgotten relic of an alien world I had abandoned. What treasure? What bounty?! There was no value greater in my mind than the odor of butchered meat.
The smell hung; thick, and caustic, upon every breath. Strong enough to make you dizzy. The moisture impregnated the soil with its congealed nectar, causing its cloying hold to clasp desperately onto your soles. Trapped.
No escape. My breathing grew labored, and forced, as I remained rooted to the spot — not unlike my arboreal masters leering stoically overhead, and behind — I was ostensibly paralyzed by the sight. Beaming sunlight glistened over reflective pools of burgundy viscera.
The light caught a rivulet, trailing from the open mouth of some forlorn domicile; causing my eyes to reflexively follow the path up to its eventual source, where I finally saw the very thing I personally dreaded most to witness. An arm. Lifeless. Extended in some gesture of futile hope... Or was it resignation?
Regardless of the intention, it was a heartbreaking sight. And it wasn't alone.
Hair, flesh, a rent smock cast aside in a rush to escape, the clear signs of struggle were scattered everywhere. It seemed like a macabre battle. Mangled, chitinous bodies lay strewn about between the devastation; some with errant legs still twitching unnaturally.
Outnumbered. Clearly, vastly outnumbered. The ground was still pockmarked with the pinpricks of what seemed like thousands of little needle-like feet; so that the earth itself was churned, like a plowed field. There was hardly a square inch that hadn't been rendered unrecognizable by their stampede.
Still, They apparently did not go down without a fight. I could picture their faces, holding onto any semblance of hope, but it was barren. Repugnant.
There was no fighting these numbers. What remained was a massacre. The caustic taste of bile filled my throat.
My mind rushed to find some other explanation, to rationalize away what it was seeing, but it was incontrovertible.
The others had joined me by then. We all stood, side by side. No one had courage enough to be the first to break the silence... And what a silence it was.
Wind whistled across the treetops, and hummed against the hollows of our open windows, but it was too still. These pathways — so often bursting with traffic and bustle — now abandoned. Why? How?
I shivered. My legs shuffled forward on their own.
"Atha," I whispered, more a plea than a query.
"Kilphy..." Rilah, tearfully, replied. Her horror was naked, without snark or accusation.
Janny collapsed, speechlessly, but Fimbs pulled ahead — shocking everyone with her focus, confidence, and poise.
"Listen." She ordered, needlessly. We would have been shocked to silence even without the catastrophe before us.
She continued, facing forward as if almost attempting to shield us from the worst of it. We studied her back as she spoke. "I know how this feels. I understand that you're all tired, and shocked, and upset, and scared, and- and so diving scared! Right? Not only for yourselves, but for your kin, as well.
"Trust me. I get the impulse to sit in this, and start mourning... But I promise you will regret it if you wait. These are crucial seconds for anyone still out there. If anyone's still alive... You know? Nobody's coming! It's up to us to save them."
I was still too far gone to say a single thing. Desperate for any direction at all, I nearly started off in execution of her orders, but Rilah's voice snapped me out of my trance. "Are you kidding me? Look! Who do you think we're going to save?! They wiped out the whole town! Those things are probably still out there. You want to die too?!"
"What?" I asked, disbelieving my ears for the second time in under an hour. "Your entire kin thinks you're dead. You're saying don't want to see them? What if this is your last chance?!"
"Shut up!" Janny shouted, from his half kneeling posture. "Fimbs is right! We don't have the time for this. You think you're gonna be safe out here, in the Daylight? Well, feel free to stay here. Watch us go salvage whatever lives we can. But if they invaded our glade in the open sunlight, then I have to wonder what makes you so sure that they won't come back for you, in the trees they're familiar with?"
He climbed to his feet, and Rilah clutched at his arm, "What if there's nothing left? What if there's nobody? What if all we have left is each other? What if they're just... Gone. Would you risk your life for nothing?"
Janny just smiled. "Yes."
I pulled her hand from his bicep, and sighed. "We did it for you..."
"Zo-el..." She beckoned, folding my hands into hers. "Please."
I shook my head, and started walking. "Come on. You can stay with me, if you want, but I'm going."
The other two had already trotted off ahead, and soon split off to the north and west independently. Undoubtedly, back to his farm and her arbor, to witness their own families.
"Well?" I asked, holding out my hand. She looked longingly back to the dusk darkened forest, and exhaled; dropping all the gear in her arms, and remarking, "I guess you'll be safer with me around. Somebody has to watch your back."
So we sprinted off, as stealthily as possible in the dying light. I scanned as readily as I could, hoping beyond hope for any signs of life scattered amongst the carcasses and offal, but it was a grisly affair. They were the faces of people I knew. People I loved. People I just saw a moment ago.
It was surreal, so I pressed on; leaning into the numbness that had taken residence in my heart. There would be time to react to all this. I just had to find one person. One. One would be enough.
Abba. Atha. Kilphy. Somiath. I'd even take Jome at this point! I just needed to hold out hope for long enough for us to be reunited, and then it'd be all worth it.
I rounded the corner to my house's ranch, and felt the bottom of my stomach drop out when I saw the size of the gash in the raptor fence. They'd been here.
"No!" I cried, refusing to let the tears blind me from what was coming next. I had to see!
I prepared to push through the leather partition in my doorway, but it was completely torn aside. Bits and pieces of the tanned hide decorated the floor.
I feverishly scanned the wreckage. The place was a mess; with broken pots and toppled jars scattered discordantly within the conservative space.
"Abba?" I asked, not hoping for much, but my pounding heartbeat skipped a beat when I heard something around the corner stir in response. I nearly tripped over the wolf-sized caddock body curled up in the hallway. Its mandibles and glossy, blue-black shell were slick with still-wet blood.
"Atha?" I repeated, now expecting ambush. There was heard a shuffling, gurgling noise. I swallowed hard. One way or another, something was alive in there — which in the case of my kin meant they had possibly fatal injuries, and the case of a predator meant a fight for my life — and I wasn't sure which sight I was dreading the most. With Rilah behind me, I raised the sickle defensively and slowed to a crawl. My pulse pounded loudly.
We turned the corner...
And like a scene from my most hallowed nightmares, I drank in the scene of a roiling wall to wall shifting mattress of blood-spattered iridescent caddock bodies, all huddled around a centerpiece of two distended, lifeless human forms. My abba was on his side, facing away from me, but a few of the caddocks were gleefully devouring his exposed flank. His arm was extended to his partner, whose hand was clasped over his. Her eyes blankly wavered at me in the hallway, like in a trance.
I froze in a mixture of panic, fear, and overwhelming dread, as I mentally ran through the odds of making any moves. She was mortally wounded, herself. Even if I were to miraculously survive all these interlocutors, I couldn't do anything to bring her home. I opened my mouth to speak, to cry, to say "I'm sorry," but nothing came out.
She gazed through me like I wasn't even there. Then, my father's body slumped over, and I saw... he was missing his head. I almost vomited, but Rilah was there.
She pulled on the back of my top. I stumbled back. Down. Out of the room. Back. Away from certain death. Out. From the unreal space of that hallway, and rooting me back in the present.
Tears flowed freely. Useless. I was too weak to help anyone. I'd remember this moment. Our last seconds together, my atha wasn't there.