25. Trouble Lurking

Thick vegetation grew from every crack in the pavement, pushing in droves through the windows of office buildings. Ground-level cafés nested colourful birds that squawked and twittered. Moss grew on everything, tinting the urban jungle a sickly green. A gentle breeze hissed through the streets and along Alister Lenning Interchange, an overpass littered with dead, rusted vehicles and human bones, skeletons infested with errant plants. It was a cool day, sun peeking over the cusp of a cloud, the rays enlivening all the colours of the world.

A large tiger nipped and pulled at a fox hide under the shadow of a defunct taxi, drew back and peeled the skin from its flesh. It snapped at the morsel of food, whetting its appetite. The shutter of a camera clicked, whirred, electronic gyros zipped and adjusted. It clicked again. The sound was abnormally loud in such a quiet area. The lens twisted and whirred, widened and slid forward. Click, whirr. Click, whirr. The silhouette of a young human lay amongst the bones of the deceased. Plants and leaves had been sewn into her coat and the backs of her pants. She held a camera, eye crammed up against the viewfinder. The lens dilated, adjusted. Click, whirr. Click, whirr.

The tiger pulled at its food, ate. The picture in the viewfinder blurred, whisked up to the roof of what used to be a multilevel car-park. Trees grew from the top, branches hung stooped with weight out across the street. A metallic glint in the image, the camera whirred, clicked, the lens dilated and slid forward. The image refocused, zoomed. Tucked against the branches, a knotted mess of plant life and vines clung to the shape of a lanky teen, sewn to the fabric of his clothes, like hers. He'd flashed a mirror at her, that was the glint, she thought. Her hands shuffled, she took her eye from the viewfinder, dug for her pocket mirror.

A cluster of birds exploded from the trees in the distance, banking for the horizon.

Something spooked them. She frowned, glanced off to where they'd come from - the car-park. She squinted, took up her camera again, and then peered down the viewfinder. No lanky boy. Her heart pumped uncomfortably against her ribcage, took in a slow, deep, calming breath. There was nothing wrong. She set the camera down against the concrete, and meditated on the thought for the moment. No - there was something wrong. Nobody signals and then disappears. An echoing boom, like splitting concrete and twisting metal, rolled down the street, a jet of dust and debris spilled from the car park building's third floor and down into the street. The crushing of glass and metal as stone rained down upon long-dead cars echoed throughout the street.

An ominous droning sound followed it.

There was definitely something wrong. The girl unscrewed her camera lens and stuffed it into her camouflaged knapsack, along with the camera, breaths uneven and shallow. A bead of nervous moisture rolled down over her forehead, she patted it dry. She glanced down to the roadway below, where the tiger still feasted, and rolled onto her back, out of sight of the road, and silently clipped her knapsack's belt around her stomach. A sharp, beastly roar ripped from the underpass. She jumped slightly and knocked her head against the cement railing. A low drone, louder, like the sound of a table being dragged across a showroom floor, followed the roar. The tiger snarled, and replied with another fierce cry - cut short with a suddenly feline yelp.

She looked to the remains beside her for comfort. The leering human skull's jaw almost seemed to be slackened in an amused guffaw, but that was probably just her fear wearing at her mind, eroding it. Deep breath in. She knew she needed to stay calm. There was a sloppy crunch from the road below, like wet garbage being slapped against concrete. The girl shuddered and felt her skin crawl. She would need to move soon; it was dangerous to stay in one spot for so long. She snuck a glance back down to the road and felt the bile rise from her stomach out of reflex; the tiger had been skinned, drawn and quartered, before being wetly tossed out onto the pavement.

She swallowed. So much blood.

She had to stay calm, relocate, and get to safety. Where was safe? The Haven? No. Not The Haven - too close to home. A thought occurred, and she breathed in deep, before committing thought to action. She hopped forward to her feet, leaping clear of the skeleton she'd been laying amongst, boots pounding and squelching against the overgrown concrete. That same droning noise filled the street again, booming, louder and more horrible than she remembered. Concrete crumbled and girders twisted behind her as she ran; she didn't look back, headed for the end of the overpass, vaulted a low-lying fence, and skirted the edge of a window of what used to be a Turkish take-out restaurant, then rounded the corner and legged it down the path, leaping between and over street posts, hugged against the ground by tendrils of plant life.

She could hear the sound of breaking glass behind her, of shattering concrete and twisting metal. She stole a look over her shoulder. The Turkish restaurant was gone, swept up into rubble. The buildings beside her rattled and shook. Windows high above street level broke with the tremors from within, sending shards of degraded glass raining down around her. It was following, lurking, making her scared. Its vast, alien intelligence could be heard in every whispering wind, in the way in which the tremors flowed from the innards of the buildings it burrowed into, out into the street.

The girl rattled as she ran, something in her back knocking against itself. Her heart pounded in her ears as she broke out into a sprint. All the animals seemed to have scurried away into hiding. She crossed the street in a matter of seconds, legs working more quickly than she could consciously coordinate. Another low drone rattled from the buildings, like it was teasingly warning her that it was still there. The girl turned into a four-way intersection. Defunct, rusted vehicles stretched into the distance for as far as she could see, some overturned and others merely wrecked and burnt. This all started with the worldwide scare, and then the riots began. Everywhere, every continent, every major and minor city; people went crazy. Nobody was ready to accept the truth.

The girl leapt onto the back of a string of cabs, running swiftly across their roofs and windshields, towards Ester Neely Street. There, she'd be good. There, she'd be safe. She hoped.

Bricks and concrete exploded out into the street from behind her, smashing windows and knocking branches from trees as an object burst from the side of an apartment building. As long and wide as a minivan, the object erupted forth, spinning viciously. Attached to it, a segmented, mechanical rope of an arm trailed, retreating to the hole it had rent in the apartment building. The object at the end of that terrible arm split into a trisected claw, crashing into a massive collection of cars behind her. The sound was practically deafening. She half-slipped, jumped forward to the next car, and leapt to the ground, before looking over her shoulder again.

The apartment building shuddered, wavering visibly, then began to bloat, seeming to blow out from the inside. The segmented, mechanical tentacle pulled taut, gripping the very foundations of the roads. The front of the apartment building weakened, split, groaned, and strained against the massive entity within. Another trisected claw burst from the building's front, followed by another and another, latching to the asphalt and sending dust clouds two stories high into the air.

The girl snapped her vision forward. It was within the building, and pulling itself out. How something that size, as large as it was, as powerful as it was, could move as silently as it had in the car-park, in an urban jungle, was beyond her. But then, that was the point, wasn't it? Danger could lurk around every corner, and the humans wouldn't even know.

She was almost at EN Str., now.

The sound behind her was phenomenal. An entire wall of the apartment building split very suddenly, like the breaking of a dam, and the thing spilled out into the street, its immeasurably large, alien, metallic body shrouded by dust clouds. She panted heavily, gasping for air, as she made the transition to Ester Neely Street.

It was more of a fortification than a street. Barricades had been assembled out of beaten and crushed cars, held securely together with razor wire and littered with sandbags. The walls were high, nearly four stories. Large, metal gates, emblazoned with the code ENS-004 began to open as ran for them. The alien machination behind her moved amazingly fast for its size, endlessly shifting metal plating armour making no noise as it stepped across the swathes of cars she'd clambered over before. It was amazing how lightweight they were, despite being so large. Large barrels extended from small, rectangular holes in the barricades, zeroing in on the metal behemoth behind her. The dark-haired girl darted desperately through the small gap that had formed in the ENS Fort gates, to relative safety.

Deafening booms rang out across the street as the cannons in the barricades exploded into life, punching large, white-hot holes in the beast approaching. The force of the strikes staggered the machine backward, its many tentacles whipping out to catch on nearby buildings. The cannons fired again, sending artillery shells slamming into the scout machine's front. Its light and silent armour disintegrated upon impact, sending white hot shards in all directions. Ghostly, blue light spilled from within its hide across the street, and the machine weakly slumped against an overgrown fast-food joint. The cannons fired again, piercing its blue core, the centre of its operations - its 'brain'.

Humans may have been unprepared for them when they came - but they were more than ready to fight for their planet.