Family: The End... Or Just The Beginning?

Her brother’s ashes sifted through her fingers and all she could do was watch as they drifted into the murky water. She gripped her chest, felt her heart break, and her tears splashed as they hit the water.

“Kellsey?” a crackled voice boomed in the drainage pipe she’d taken shelter in. She reached for the walkie-talkie, praying Sam’s voice had not given her away.

“Kell—” he began, but she quickly pressed the call button with her thumb.

She was about to remove her thumb when the walkie started to emit a high-pitched noise, like geese warning of danger. Kellsey’s eyes darted to the light at the end of the tunnel. She absently turned the dial on the walkie to “off” as three giant frogs, or lizard-like legs came to a stop at the pipe's end. She held her breath, held her fear in check, and quietly exhaled when they moved on.

I gotta get out of here, she thought, but she couldn’t crawl back out into the open and the only other way was a dark, dirty pipe. I’ll probably end up in a sewer! Huh! Least they won’t be able to smell me.

With another look at the entrance she'd climbed in from, she slid the walkie into her jeans pocket, kissed her brother’s urn and turned into the darkness. She began a long, wet crawl to nowhere. Those who'd survived the first onslaught still hadn’t figured out how they communicated, but they always seemed to know where we are, Kellsey thought, could be reading my mind right now.

Distracted by that thought, her right hand fell into a deep pool just as she rounded a bend. Her chin smacked down against a piece of rebar sticking out of an old water-warn concrete slab. A howl escaped her lips but she caught herself when she tasted blood. She had to stop. They were attracted to blood. Could smell it from miles away. One of them swallowed her brother whole, after a sharp stone sliced through his boot and into his foot.

***

In a fit of rage and grief, Kellsey pounced on the creature, and with a firm grip around the hilt of her knife, she stabbed and sliced into it until it moved no more. That’s when she met Sam. He ran from the bushes, pulled her off and dragged her away.

“They’re attracted to the blood,” he whispered, but Kellsey didn’t care, she wanted that thing dead. Wanted her brother back.

“We can get him later. You killed it, all right? But others will come,’ Sam said, holding his hand over her mouth.

Kellsey tried to speak, but Sam had a good grip.

“You need to be quiet,” he growled, “or we’re all dead.”

Kellsey stopped fighting and stopped screaming when she saw several other petrified people cowering inside a large fallen tree.

“Wipe her down, give her some clothes,” he whispered to them, “burn the ones she’s wearing, fast.”

Leaning down, he looked into Kellsey’s eyes. She was fighting back tears.

“They don’t like fire,” he whispered. “Who was that? The one it ate?”

“My… my brother,” she said as many hands stripped her down to her underwear and dressed her in clean clothes.

When night fell, and introductions were over, Kellsey and Sam risked everything to retrieve her brother. The beasts were cannibals and had eaten through the one she’d killed... The one with Clem inside. Most of Clem had been devoured from the feeding frenzy, but Sam helped her pull his remains from the creature and sent the others on.

“We’ll be there soon,” he’d said, then helped Kellsey build a fire pit.

They laid Clem’s remains in the pit, and Sam pulled a tin of lighter fluid from his top pocket. After squirting its contents over Clem's remains, he threw in a match.

“We can stay a little while,” he whispered. “They won’t come near the fire, but they'd know we're here. They’ll be waiting.”

Kellsey watched her brother burn, reached into her pocket and pulled out a silver locket her parents gave her on her last birthday. It was in the shape of a love heart and comfortably fit in the palm of her hand.

“What’s that?” Sam asked seeing her wrap her fingers around it.

“Mum and Dad,” Kellsey said showing him their pictures.

“How did they… I mean, did they get to eat—”

“Yes… no, I don’t know,” she said. “We were told to hide, Clem and me. Told not to come out of the basement until they said, but we heard a sickening screeching sound and peeked out just as they... those... those things smashed through the roof and took them. I’d watched the news, but never thought—”

“I’m sorry, Kellsey,” Sam said, "for that, but we need to go now.”

“Wait a minute,” she whispered and reached into the hot ash scooping a small portion into her hand. She then stepped away and poured Clem’s ashes into it, “Now you can rest with mum and dad, my brave brother.”

That was weeks… or was it months ago? Kellsey thought as she followed Sam further into darkness.

The memory reminded her of her family in her locket, and she reached into her pocket to ensure they were still there. They gave her the strength to keep moving when things got too much.

***

She carefully dabbed at the wound with the bottom of her shirt and held it tight to her chin to stem the flow of blood, but there wasn’t any.

Must be deep.

That thought brought an odd sort of comfort. She’d only tasted the blood but couldn’t feel any on her skin. She sat for a few moments longer to collect herself. Tears streamed down her face, and she reached into her pocket for the walkie.

“It’s too much,” she whispered, “Too much.”

She wanted to talk to someone, anyone, but knew she couldn’t. She’d seen the smaller ones. They’d be on her in a minute if they heard their voices, but just holding tight to that walkie gave her a sense of hope.

He’ll wait ‘til nightfall before moving on, she thought, Don’t have long to get out and back to him. He’ll be worried.

She’d climbed into the drain around noon and knew she had to get moving. She checked her chin once more and knew they hadn’t smelled her blood. She’d be dead if they had.

No one knew where they came from. Sure, there were rumours of government genetic engineering, and scientists playing God with something they shouldn’t. But there were also those rumours that they came from the skies, or from under the oceans, but Kellsey had never seen any proof of that, she leaned towards the government conspiracy.

It’s them. I know it, she thought and anger overpowered her pain, Dad would’ve said something if he thought it was… something else.

Sliding the walkie back into her pocket, she double-checked her locket to make sure her family were still with her, then crawled deeper into the darkness. She knew she couldn’t light her zippo. It was a sewer pipe and she didn’t want to burn up in the methane.

Breathing it’s bad enough.

Kellsey came to another bend in the pipe. There was a fork in front of her. A choice had to be made. She didn’t know the area they’d been walking through, so didn’t know the lay of the land.

“Right it is,” she muttered and turned, feeling the ground ahead with more caution this time.

As she turned the corner, she was confident she saw a dull light ahead. She turned for a moment to see if the left drain had the same view, but it didn’t. It was black as night. She turned back. Crab walked as fast and as silently as she could towards that light. It didn’t take as long as she thought, with the drain opening into a cubed cement room.

There were yellow waterproof lights on the wall, and they were on. There was a short stairway that led to a metal door with a large wheel lock on it.

Taking a cautious look around, Kellsey gingerly trod the steps. She took hold of the wheel lock and prepared herself before turning it. She expected it to be a hard to turn and maybe noisy, but it was neither. The wheel lock spun surprisingly fast and before she knew what was happening, it’d opened.

She looked around to make sure she had an escape, then peered into the room behind that door. What she saw shocked her so much, she wanted to run, but her feet wouldn’t move.

“Kellsey,” Sam said with a smile.

He was wearing a lab coat and everyone she’d been travelling with were naked. Each on their own gurney with intravenous drips attached to them.

“What’s… what’s happening, Sam?” Kellsey asked as he took her by the hand and pulled her into the room.

“What’s supposed to happen, Kellsey,’ he said. “I knew it, the moment you opened that locket, I knew you were the one.”

“What? What one?”

“Open it and I’ll show you,” he said while busying himself with the others. “I’d seen pictures of you, of course, but, voila, there you were. I wasn’t about to let you go.”

Kellsey pulled the locket from her pocket, but something on a table caught her eye.

“Is that the… the… thing,” she said finding it hard to string her words together. “I gave my dad?”

“Oh, yes indeedy, Kellsey,” he said with a smile. “That’s the ashtray you made for your dad in grade three.”

“I don’t understand, where are we?”

“Your dad’s lab of course,” Sam said coming to a stop in front of her. “He was a clever man but lacked… vision. That’s where I came in.”

“What?” Kellsey asked and began to move back towards the door.

“You, my beautiful Kellsey, with your big brown eyes, sweet full lips, and long golden brown hair… and everything else… you are the missing… well, now found, ingredient.”

Kellsey backed into the door and began to feel around behind her for the latch.

“Uh, arh,” Sam said. “You could try going back the way you came, but a few of my babies are just out there waiting to be fed.”

“Your, your babies?” she said stepping away from the door.

“Of course, they are. I’m the one with vision,” he said.

“You already said that,” Kellsey said scowling at him. “And what’s this about an ingredient?”

“Well, you see. Your dad was working on perfecting a DNA strand that crossed a Komodo Dragon with Blue Tongue lizard… to make the Komodo less aggressive and smaller. What a waste!”

“What did you do?” Kellsey asked, gripping tight to her locket, to her family, for strength.

“Me? My dear? I substituted the DNA of the Blue Tongue with human DNA… specifically, your fathers.”

“What?” Kellsey screamed. “You, you created those, those things? I don’t believe you. How’d you get dads DNA?”

“On one of the many nights he stayed snoozing at his desk, I slipped a little something into his tea… often actually, took several vials of his blood… but do you know what, Kellsey?”

Kellsey’s head was spinning, and she’d backed up to the door again, this time she found the latch, and coughed as she undid it. Sam was busy telling her how wonderful he was, so didn’t hear.

“What?”

“Your dad had a blood disorder, hence the, well trouble with giving those creatures form, but you, Kellsey, do not.”

“How—”

“How would I know?” he asked. “I took your blood as you slept that first night. Now, be a good girl and lie down.”

“NO!” she screamed and ran around the lab smashing test tubes and beakers, evading his grasp. She pulled the intravenous lines from the others and came to a stop at the door.

“Get back here you bitch,” Sam yelled and lunged for her. As he did, Kellsey pushed the door open and Sam flew through it and fell over the banister, into the mouths of, “his babies.”