My Short Story

by **Jager Arach** Tue Nov 15, 2011 2:47 pm

Alright I'm starting to try and get back into my writing. So I'm going through my short stories and editing them/ So here is one, tell me what you think.

I lay under a car, a bolt action rifle gripped tightly in my hands. I felt sweat running down my face as the heat under the car kept building up, like a sauna. I was only sixteen, but I had survived longer than most people and I wanted to keep it that way. A curly brown lock fell down past my eyes and began dripping dirt mixed with sweat on the ground. I brushed away the lock and watched as a dark reptilian foot stepped around the car at a leisured pace. My heart began thumping fast. I was stricken with the fear that it would find me and take me away, to wherever the monsters took their victims. I heard another noise and looked to the side. I saw a man’s feet running down the road, the creature leapt on top of him as he tried to run past it. The man landed with a sickening thud on the hard asphalt and turned his head towards me as the creature growled lowly. He had short blonde hair with blue eyes and a terrified expression on his face that was silently screaming for help. I watched as the creature’s claws began tearing into him and he cried out in pain. I shut my eyes out of terror as pieces of flesh and hair were flung everywhere. The screams stopped and I waited a few seconds before I opened my eyes again. Quickly scooting out from under the car at the sight of the man’s body, I grabbed my rifle and began running down an empty stretch of highway, congested with cars filled with nothing, but corpses and abandoned possessions. I stopped and looked back towards the city as smoke began to rise from the skyline. I heard a siren go off in the distance and then a loud explosion. I watched as one of the tall sky scrapers in the distance toppled to the earth in a cloud of dust and debris. Terrified, I looked up as I heard a loud boom and saw the sky fill up with humongous jagged, metallic triangular shaped machines. I began to run for my life, knowing in my heart the end of humanity had begun.
I sat on the floor of the cabin with my knife out listening to the lyrics of the song blearing through my ear buds. “Because we’re not alone here not at all”, rang through my head with beat of the drums and sharp strings of the guitar. My name is Calin Peirce and I had been through a lot in the past 8 years and was no longer that terrified young man, but had become a full grown adult. I have deep brown eyes with short brunette hair having cut it years ago and my beard was growing back in, even though I had shaved only two days ago. I lay down on the hard floor and gazed up on the ceiling letting my wonder to a different place. A lot of times I felt much older than I actually was. My eyes had accumulated dark bags under them from a lack of sleep over the years. My face and body was scarred, wrinkled and my hands were rough from years of toil. My eyes grew heavy as I lay there and it was getting late. I took along breath and fell into a deep sleep.
I awoke from a bang on the cabin’s door; the door shook again from another hit and then gave in as another bang shook it again. A man stormed in with a rifle in his hand, he turned it on me as soon as he spotted me lying on the floor. I stood slowly and raised my hands into the air not wanting to make any sudden movement in case the moron shot me. He advanced forward, with a serious expression on his face and I knew he would kill me if I gave him a reason. I saw another person step in after him, a young girl. The man looked behind himself and he was about to speak when I made my move. I grabbed the gun by the barrel and yanked it from his hands. I quickly followed up by slamming the butt of the gun into his face. I aimed it at him as he fell to my feet and began to cower like a feeble child. I looked him in the eye with an intense glare and was about to pull the trigger and then I looked up and saw the girl’s expression of sheer terror. I sighed and lowered the gun with a frown and wondering if I would regret my decision.
The man’s boy’s was Bryce; he was twenty five with green eyes and straight brown hair down to his cheeks. The girl was his sister and was 17 with long curly brown hair and hazel eyes. We were sitting on the hard wooden floor; I had the rifle in my lap watching Bryce as he told me their story. I learned that they were exiles from nearby a survivalist colony and were being chased by the creatures that roamed the now baron wasteland outside. I looked at the two of them, Bryce was holding the side of his face in pain and the girl just silently stared at the floor. It felt old sitting next to them and the realization of how many years it had been since the end of days had started for humanity hit me. The girl looked up at me and spoke for the first time, “You have to help shelter us”, she said quietly.” They’ll find us and take us away…. Please”, she added and looked at me with eyes filled with dread and fear. I took in a deep breath and exhaled quickly. “Alright,” I said. “You can stay for a couple days, but that’s it, I don’t need you two bringing your bullshit onto me”. She smiled at me and it made me sick to my stomach for I knew that the truth is I would have to kill them and flee tonight, before the beast found and killed us all.
That night I quietly packed my bags with haste and loaded two bullets into the clip of my nine millimeter pistol. Walking over to the two sleeping lumps on the floor, I cocked the gun and stood over the male form looking down at the sleeping form that was Bryce, contemplating what I was about to do. I aimed the gun at him and slowly switched the safety to off. The click that resonated from the gun was as loud as a door being slammed shut in my mind. I stood and waited for the moment when my finger would slip over the trigger and send him from the living realm and into my nightmares. The face of every life I had ever taken flashed through my mind and I struggled with my conscious for what seemed like all of eternity and finally gave in. I let my arm fall to my side and let the gun drop to the floor. Bryce woke up and bolted up right staring at me with suspicion. He looked at the gun and went to stand up when it happened. A hole the size of my head was blasted through the cabin wall, I covered my face as fiery splinters flew everywhere, then another followed that one and then a few more. “Get up”, I yelled as the girl awoke with fear in her eyes. “They found us”, she screamed. I looked around quickly as the girl stood up and I saw a small boarded up hole in the wall in the back of the old cabin. I went up to it and began ripping off the planks one by one until the hole was exposed. More holes were blasted into the cabin wall as I tore off the last plank. Another blast hit the front and the whole front wall began to give way and I knew that it wouldn’t be much longer before the whole cabin collapsed. I beckoned to the girl to move, she climbed through the opening and everything went quiet. I stopped and listened and then I heard them. The sharp clicks and growls that the creatures use to communicate broke the silence. Bryce picked up the rifle and began firing randomly into the darkness. I grabbed him by his shoulder and pushed him towards the hole. I was about to climb after Bryce, but I stopped for a few seconds and thought about what I was doing. “Come on”, he said as I sat there contemplating my actions. I was thinking about how I had meant to kill him and his sister and he knew it, but yet he was still willing to trust me and help save my life. I picked up a plank and shoved it back over the hole just as Bryce’s eyes went wide. I stopped and looked at him for a few seconds and a mutual understanding passed between us. He grabbed his sister by the arm and began to drag her into the darkness. I watched them go and returned to boarding the hole back up. I stopped as the last plank went into place and sighed turning around knowing what lay in wait
I walked over and picked up my 9 mil, I stood there in silence for a few seconds. Then it poked its head from the side of the doorway. It was long and slender with three eyes and dark gray skin; it flicked a long tail back and forth as it went from standing on four legs to crawling on six. Its eyes glowed a deep red and I felt as if the devil himself was boring into my very soul. I gripped the gun in my hand tightly and waited for it to make a move. It charged at me full speed and I pulled the gun up and fired a round into its skull. The creature stopped and its body arched back right before slumping to the ground dead. I looked around and began walking towards the doorway, stepping over the dead body. I walked out into the night and breathed the fresh air. I stopped for a second and gathered my thoughts before beginning to walk again, deeper into the forest. As I walked a dead man’s walk the words of a song began ringing through my head, bringing me somewhere, anywhere other than the place I was. “As the world falls away and I can’t find a reason. As the world turns to gray and I can’t find a reason”, I silently sang to myself. As I walked I thought about here I was about to die and all I could feel was guilt for all the wrongs I had committed in my past, so many lives I had senselessly destroyed. I stopped and watched as more glowing eyes began appearing around me and low growls sounded from the surrounding trees. I walked deeper into the forest, knowing that the end was finally here and death’s cold embrace was all that waited for me and nothing more.