by Eddie Patin
A small head appeared, and Kayleen gasped again as eight eyes of glowing blue and purple light flared open, boring into Kayleen’s center like lasers...
The long and slender golden legs began to move, and the gold spider stirred with life, sliding through the void toward her with long and delicate steps.
It was big...
The monstrous golden spider was the size of a car (a Suburban, she thought) with legs many times as long, and as Kayleen’s heart beat faster within the confines of the golden bands that lashed down around her, the metallic creature suddenly dashed at her with a speed that made her mind reel!
As the arachnid face and blazing blue and purple eyes of bright fire swallowed up Kayleen’s vision, she thought the huge, golden thing would swallow her up, but was blinded by the light instead...
Kayleen smacked her forehead against the window, and her eyes flew open!
“Oh god!” she hissed, her eyes still seeing the blinding white light of the spider of the—
Light of the ... what?!
There was a spider?
Something ... gold?
“The Weave...” she said quietly.
What the heck was that?
When the world stopped spinning and started making sense again a moment later, Kayleen looked around. She suddenly remembered the mist. The alien soldiers. The slime and the power outage...
She and Hannah were hiding in a lady’s Suburban in the intersection of Sixth and Market.
The slime was crawling down the DMV building. Crawling and quivering in the trees...
Kayleen’s eyes darted to the pale, misty world outside the dark window in front of her face.
She held her breath.
Her heart was still racing, and she could hear her heartbeat in her ears...
“Calm,” she whispered to herself, and her voice, crisp inside the stuffy SUV, brought her back to reality.
All was quiet.
The girl sat for a few moments, scanning the edges of the mist around her, looking for the spectral forms of the slender, alien soldiers, stalking through the fog...
Nothing.
She could hear the faint snoring of her roommate on the floor next to her, the long, hard breaths of a girl sleeping off her hangover. Kayleen looked down and saw Hannah’s body, covered in the pink fleece blanket, smoothly moving up and down with her long breaths.
“Holy shit,” she said.
What a weird dream...
“Hannah,” she muttered, reaching down to shake her roommate’s huddled form, moving under the pink blanket.
The dark windows of the truck were steamed over.
Shit.
How long were they sleeping? Their breathing steamed the whole truck up, and it would be obvious from the outside that there were living people within...
Hannah’s back squirmed under Kayleen’s hand, but the hung-over girl just let out a longer, louder breath, then continued sleeping.
Peering out of the dark, steamy glass, Kayleen searched the streets and the edges of the mist for the alien soldiers, but all was quiet.
A sudden movement right in front of her nose—on the outside of the tinted window—drew her focus to a small, wriggling tentacle of clear slime climbing its way up the glass.
“Holy Moly,” she whispered, watching the thin line of ooze slowly twist and writhe its way up the outside of the window like an impossibly long inchworm, leaving a sticky, transparent residue everywhere it touched.
Kayleen cast off her blanket, shoving it into the back seat, then shook Hannah again.
“Come on, Hannah!” she said. “The coast is clear! Let’s go!”
Hannah groaned an aggressive whine and refused to move.
Kayleen scoffed, and climbed into the front seat, accidentally hitting Hannah’s back with a glancing blow from one foot.
“Oww!!” her roommate whined. “Fuck!”
Taking a quick moment to look around outside for aliens first, Kayleen opened the glove box to see what was inside.
There were loads of papers, folded up receipts from tire dealerships and mechanics, envelopes, a manual for the SUV from when it was new, a small nail-cutting kit, little packets of wet wipes from restaurants, some wrapped straws and salt and pepper packets...
There!
She grabbed an old, plastic yellow flashlight that looked like it came from the 80’s, and flicked on the gaudy side-mounted switch.
Nothing.
Dead.
“Figures.” Kayleen scoffed and tossed the light back into the glove box. She didn’t bother to close the compartment door when she reached back and shook Hannah again.
“What the fuck, Kay-Kay?!” her roommate shouted a little too loudly.
“Be quiet, Hannah! You wanna draw their attention??”
“I wanna sleep for a while longer! Leave me be!” Her voice was muffled under the blanket, her face close to the floor.
Kayleen folded her arms up against her jacket. It was cold in the Suburban.
“Come on, Hannah. I’m thirsty, hungry, and the store is just a few blocks away!”
“Let’s go baaaaack,” Hannah said, finally stirring, transforming from a huddled blob under the pink blanket to a sitting human with a messed-up Mohawk.
“Seriously? We’re like ... almost there!”
“Yeah, girlie, this is getting too weird,” Hannah said, squinting against the brightness of the mist. Her lips were set in a sneer that made Kayleen think of big, fat, dark-red slugs.
What time was it, anyway? How long did they sleep? Would it be dark soon??
“All of those aliens went back that way,” Kayleen replied, “to the dorms.”
And it was true. When her roommate mentioned going back, it occurred to Kayleen that all of those soldiers they were hiding from—at least a dozen of them, probably more—were heading south. Four or five blocks back there was the Ondine dorm building, full of students hiding in their rooms and around the main floor entrance.
What was going to happen to them when the aliens got there?
Did it happen already?
At any rate, if they went back now, there was a pretty good chance of running into those otherworldly warriors and their guns and spears again...
And if they went ahead to the store—if they made it, and loaded up on food and stuff—where would they go after?
“Fuck,” Hannah said. “Well let’s just go back and see. I don’t wanna keep walking through this nasty shit.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Hannah,” Kayleen responded. “Go and see? What’s your plan?”
“I dunno, Kay-kay,” she whined. “I just feel like it would be better if—”
“Well use your brain, Hannah.” Kayleen said, and felt her face turn hot. “Those things were patrolling back to there. The slime and stuff is thicker here. Maybe they’re invading—maybe everyone is already dead over there and we would be too if we weren’t out here when they passed through. Did you think of that? And stop calling me these stupid cutesy names! My name is Kayleen. Not precious. Not Kay-kay. Alright?!”
Hannah made a sound, smacking her mouth open, offended. Her brow screwed up in confusion and indignation, and Kayleen expected her to launch into a rant like on her YouTube videos.
But instead, her roommate sighed, and put her fingers to her temples, clenching her eyes shut.
“Look at you finally growing some balls,” Hannah said, massaging at her apparent head-ache. “Then what are we gonna do?”
“I don’t totally know,” Kayleen replied. “But we’re close to the store, so we may as well keep going. Then maybe we can try to sneak back and see if the dorm building is still okay? Or we can find another place to hole up...”
“Maybe we should just stay at the store and eat and drink and be merry until the whole fucking world ends,” Hannah said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
When they finally left the Suburban, stepping carefully and quietly down into the street, Kayleen kept her senses peeled for more alien soldie
rs.
The streets were clear, and the two of them stared around in wonder at the quiet buildings and trees, coated in clear slime that seemed to move here and there on its own.
When they neared the corner they were intending to turn at, Kayleen found the hulking, long form of the MAX Light Rail appearing from the mist—the train-bus thing sat quiet and abandoned on its subtle rails in the middle of Sixth Avenue in front of the hotel on the corner, reaching across the intersection like a tired, white caterpillar that just gave up.
“Wanna check inside?” Kayleen said.
“Sure, whatever.”
Stealthily approaching the rear-most car, decorated with ads for the community college (GO PANTHERS!), Kayleen squinted against the white mist and tried to see through the darkened windows.
All of the folding doors were open, all along the entire tram.
Kayleen walked up to the closet set of doors, her vans hardly making a sound against the ooze-covered asphalt. She paused, looking back to Hannah. Her roommate’s face was focused and grim, her right hand behind her back and tucked into her pocket. Kayleen knew the girl had her knife in her hand.
Hannah gave her a nod.
Kayleen stepped inside, looking forward into the darkness of the dead train car.
All across the rows of plastic seats, around the standing metal poles, and up on the luggage racks, were various bags—packs, briefcases, grocery bags full of half-dumped items—the remnants of normalcy interrupted and fled.
A lone man lay on the floor of the car up ahead, sprawled out in jeans, hiking boots, and a scorched jacket, blackened and tattered over the middle of his back.
Kayleen gasped, and her eyes locked onto the body.
“What is it?” Hannah asked from behind her.
“There’s a ... there’s a dead guy in here,” Kayleen replied.
“Move!” Hannah said, pushing Kayleen aside. She didn’t realize that she was still standing in the doorway. “Let me through!”
Kayleen moved to the right, grabbing one of the vertical poles. It was slick and gleamed in the light of the mist. Slippery with slime.
“Gross,” she muttered.
The man was dead on his stomach, and his head was turned toward them. His face was glistening with ooze, but that wasn’t what made her feel so uneasy. The guy’s skin was doughy, pressed into the textured rubber floor, and his eyes were open and glazed over. It looked like a face, but Kayleen felt weird and buzzed with a numbness she didn’t understand. It felt like it was a man, but also not a man...
Hannah stepped past her, and nudged the man’s body with her boot.
She looked back.
“Yeah, he’s dead alright. Poor fucker.”
Kayleen opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
“What?” Hannah said. “Haven’t you ever seen a dead body before??”
She hadn’t, actually. Not even when her mom died, back when she was eleven. Her mother died of cancer, and it was an open casket, but for some reason, Kayleen couldn’t make herself approach. She didn’t want to see her mother’s face, molded and cleaned by the mortician to look like she was at peace, when she spent so long in pain...
It seemed wrong, seeing her mom modified to help everyone else feel better, so Kayleen spent the entire service sitting in the back pew.
When the girl spent the rest of her young life growing up with her grandmother in Queens, there were long moments when the old woman would stare at her with concern on her face, and Kayleen wondered if her grandmother always thought of that service. Always wondered why her granddaughter didn’t want to see her mom one last time...
Kayleen shook her head.
There was a weird energy about the dead man. It felt like he was sleeping, but not.
“It’s nothing,” Hannah said, giving him a kick in the side. The dead guy’s body jostled like it was made of Jell-O under its clothes. “This binary bastard’s just meat now...”
Kayleen frowned, and forced herself to approach. “What’s that on his back?” she asked.
The jacket and clothing underneath was cut to ribbons and scorched black.
“Looks like maybe he was shot by one of those alien blasters or something,” Hannah replied.
They didn’t explore the light rail anymore.
Kayleen found herself rushing back out into the open, foggy and slimy outdoors, seeking fresh air, but only breathing in the odor of vinegar and lemon disinfectant instead.
Later, she thought back to the light rail, and wondered why she didn’t think to search through the many abandoned bags there. They could have probably found lots of supplies from all of the stuff people left behind when they fled.
But instead, Kayleen just wanted to move on to the grocery store, and put the dead dude out of her mind...
By the time they stepped onto Columbia Street and turned west, Kayleen found herself stepping on ropy growths of toughened ooze that sprawled across the wet asphalt like expanding veins—meaty and partially see-through, like milky vines of esophageal structures full of clear jelly.
“So weird and disgusting,” she said, squishing at one with her left shoe.
“What the fuck is that?” Hannah asked.
Kayleen heard the click of her roommate’s switchblade popping open, and the girl bent down.
“No, don’t!” Kayleen hissed.
Hannah looked up at her, grimaced, shrugged, and cut through one of the alien vines.
The tube split open and hissed as if pressurized, and lumpy, transparent jelly oozed on onto the slimy pavement around it. For just an instant, Kayleen thought she saw a puff of greenish-purple smoke emerge from the clear ropy thing, before dissipating into the air in front of Hannah’s face.
Her roommate made a sour expression, stood, and violently coughed a few times.
“Ugh!” she cried in between choking. “What the fuck—nasty and burns!”
Kayleen stared down at the wounded tube on the road, and her eyes traveled over a hundred just like it, reaching across the street from the sidewalks on either side, expanding and invading out of the undergrowth and bushes—coming from anywhere that was green and grassy before.
Everything was turning slick and bulbous and covered in tubes; milky and translucent.
When the two girls passed by the huge Ladd Tower, with its blue-grey glass that normally reflected the sky, Kayleen saw that the entire small skyscraper was subdued. Coated in glistening sludge, the whole building looked grey and withdrawn into the thick, bright fog.
Just past the tower, Kayleen and Hannah stopped as they approached the big green belt between the two Park Avenues. Only one more block past the thick stretch of huge, old trees, and they’d find the Safeway, but Kayleen found herself backing up to the red steps of the church on the corner as she looked up into the boughs and branches...
The walkway that cut through the middle of the park, north to south, was hardly visible through all of the slimy ropes of alien growth along the ground.
And the trees...
The trees were moving.
At first glance, it looked like the many old, towering trees—even the thin, newer ones—had animated into yearning, living things, like clichés out of spooky old cartoons! The sounds of them moving hit her first. Slimy tentacles and other tubular things slithered and squelched and hissed. When she looked up into the higher reaches of the trees, Kayleen saw that living vines of milky scum were twisting and climbing around the trunks and branches, enveloping leaves with thin sheets of gooey armor. Strange, luminescent and fleshy pods grew from the crooks in the trees’ limbs, expanding right before her eyes!
“Look at that!” she said to Hannah, pointing at the nearest pod. “They’re blowing up like slime balloons—probably full of that nasty gas stuff...”
“I ... feel like we shouldn’t go through there,” Hannah said.
Kayleen looked at Columbia Street as it continued through the green belt, the long park fields extending to the north and south on eith
er side of the road. The weird, clear tubes full of gas and jelly stretched out across the asphalt from one side to the other. The boughs of the trees being smothered by the alien growths were far enough overhead that walking through there would be just like continuing on the rest of street, just like they had been...
“We don’t have to touch the trees,” she replied. “Let’s just stick to the street.”
As they stepped into the eerie and noisy park, Kayleen saw movement in the corner of her eye, and snapped her head to look to the north.
Hannah followed her frantic glance.
In the mist of the changing trees, she saw three forms approaching. Tall, slender bodies were slowly and gracefully moving south through the white fog.
One clearly had one of those long, bladed spears...
“Soldiers,” Kayleen whispered.
The girls stopped in the middle of the green belt, standing on the white, painted cross-walk, now only barely visible through the translucent, slimy growths on the street. Hexagon-shaped concrete-tiled walkways extended north and south through the park strip, lined with dead lampposts and benches covered in gunky tentacles like draped intestines. One of those new standalone bathroom structures sat in the middle of the park near the street, showing a women’s sign on a door decorated with a poster about the park’s history, now obscured with ooze...
“There!” Kayleen hissed, and the two of them ran for the hiding place, hoping that the alien soldiers hadn’t seen them already...
Want to know what happens next??
Continue to Season 1, Episode 4!
“Empire’s End” – Season 1, Episode 4 (Book 4)
"Terrifying and unique! I've never seen an apocalyptic vision like this before--so creative and cool!"
Our heroes struggle to survive what seems like the human EMPIRE'S END in the bizarre and horrid fusion of Earth with dimensions from all across the universe!
After enduring the massive EMP bursts that accompanied the opening of Portal Zero and dimensional tears all across the globe, six groups of Americans across the country are starting to come to terms with not being the dominant species on Earth anymore. It's hard enough adapting to the destruction of the planet's electric grids, but now, they and the people closest to them are suffering the unrelenting attacks of monsters from other realms!