The pair had walked for hours before the soldier that had saved Chris’ life decided that they could rest for a few hours. Largely at Chris’ insistence, or more accurately his ceaseless whining, as Chris lacked the spine to actually insist upon anything. So now they sat against a tree, neither one particularly comfortable resting upon the roots that snaked and warred for space along the ground.

“So where are you from, kid?” The man spoke, eyes still warily searching through the spaces in the greenery. Chris turned to look at his savior, hypocritically judging his attire as strange. He was wearing a set of cargo pants and army fatigues with the sleeves shoddily cut at the shoulder. And a cowboy hat with a thick, synthetic eagle feather stuck from the top rested on his head.

“Does it matter?” Chris said, subconsciously trying to mimic the man’s deep gravelly voice to no positive effect. He still stank, and he still hurt and no amount of small talk would take his mind off of what he’d had to do to make it here.

The man brought one hand up to scratch at the stubble of his wrinkled face. “Remembering where you came from always matters, even when it seems like it doesn’t. But I guess how it can seem like it wouldn’t. You got a name at least? Mine’s Ray.”

Chris was tempted to not answer this question either. He didn’t want a conversation, he wanted to sleep. And when he woke up he wanted his entire life to be a dream or at the very least some kind of horrible french experimental film. So he just sat there like a petulant child, refusing to answer just to vent any amount of his frustration in whatever small, pathetic way he could manage.

Ray sighed after a few moments. “Look, kid. For better or worse fate, or just plain luck brought us together. I want to live, and if you didn’t want to you should have stayed in the ditch back there. And I want to help you, I do. But I’m gonna need you to meet me half-way on this, or it simply is not going to work.”

Chris stayed silent.

More sighing followed. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. But at least nod if you’re willing to help me as I help you. If you can have my back while I have yours.” Ray looked directly at him now, his old, blue eyes demanding an answer.

Chris wilted under his gaze and nodded meekly. He didn’t actually have the faintest idea of how he would help of course, and even silently resented the man for a growing list of fabricated reasons. But the one real reason was that Ray made him feel small; small and useless. Everything about the man spoke to some unshakable competence. The world was falling apart right in front of them and here Ray was with a look in his eye saying that it could fall apart completely and he’d get along just fine. Enter Chris, half a day into the end of the world and already a bit farther than half-way dead.

Ray smiled, “Alright, let’s get up and get moving then. I don’t know how much daylight we have to waste here but I intend to use it.”

“Can’t we just rest, a few moments more?” Chris pleaded even as he took Ray’s hand to help himself up.

“Nope. Let’s get a move on kid.” The pair trudged on, Ray leading the way a good ten to twelve paces ahead of Chris, to make sure everything was safe. They didn’t walk far before Ray gestured Chris to stay low as he beckoned him forward. “Look at that.” Ray whispered and pointed, a note of disbelief in his voice.

A group of deer stood among tangled, bloody roots. In the middle of their coven was a strange and foreign beast. Reptilian, with a black hide and a tail ending in a club of bone, equally as long as its body, together totalling twelve feet in length. From where he knelt in the red lichen Chris could not see its face, but that hardly ranked among his concerns as his attention shifted to the deer.

Chris had never seen a deer in real life, as they were not indigenous to the Edison family basement, but he’d seen pictures. And even with that little surface knowledge to inform him, Chris knew these deer were wrong. Their teeth were razor sharp as they leaned over the corpse of whatever reptile had found its end among them. They tore at its flesh with an audible ripping sound before turning their heads skyward to gulp down the shreds of food with an undulation of their head. Their eyes also faced straight forward, a fact that Chris became all too familiar with as a sentinel on the outskirts of the pack swung its head to stare at where he hid, its ears twitching rhythmically.

Ray pulled him back gently and pointed in the opposite direction from the coven before slinking off. Chris followed as silently as his frame would allow him, his heartbeat thudding in his ears and his breath stilled by fear. The pair creeped in lock step along the uneven ground, eyes constantly pacing through every bit of open air, hoping to catch any other strange creatures before the creatures caught them. “What the hell were those?” Chris hissed

“Some kind of deer for sure.”

“Deer don’t have teeth like that.”

“Here they do,” Ray sighed, “I guess.” One hand lifted his cap from his head as he rested his M16 in the crook of his arm, the other snaked through a thin, wispy grouping a white hairs on his head. The motion tilted his head back, and Chris watched as his skin went pale.

Something akin to morbid fascination drew Chris’ eyes skyward, the same terrible inertia that made train wrecks difficult to turn away from. Above them, in groups so large it boughed the branches of the trees were groups of fanged monkeys, each possessing a pair of large feathery wings that swung silently as the creatures jostled and pushed each other. Competing for the best spots with which to view the walking food.

“What the hell is this place.” Ray whispered. Chris was running before the last word was even out in the air. His feet pounding a desperate beat on the soft ground. A great howling split the air above him as the monkeys realized their game was up.

The howling combined with the shaking of leaves and his own ragged breaths was in that moment the only thing that mattered in his head. Even the ground in front of him was little more than a blur through the tears that poured unceasingly from his tired eyes. His hands met the rough flesh of roots and the soft giving pull of the red lichen as his knees gave out beneath him and he dragged himself forward with every pained breath as his chest grew tight with his heart’s rebellion.

As the air began to cut down his throat like rusted nails and even his arms felt like they would cave with a second more his hands reached forward to pull at anything they could reach and found nothing. Chris lost balance and tumbled forward even as terribly human like hands began to wrap themselves around his calves. And so he and his captors fell into a dark hollow carved in the trunk of one of the massive forest trees.

It was hard to see in the shadows of the hollow, but Chris could feel the two apes that held him just fine, their horrid fingers digging into the soft flesh of his calves with an intense, frightening hunger. He flopped around as his body settled on to the floor of what could very well be his grave and swung his gun behind him, receiving a satisfying thwack of the metal barrel of the gun meeting flesh and a sharp reverb that stung his hand in return. His satisfaction was short lived however as the apes began to pummel him. Chris kicked and flailed wildly, any hit a victory that bought him precious moments free of pain. He had no concept of how long the fight took, merely reaching for each precious new moment where new breath would come and the beating of his heart still pounded in his ears along with the howling and screeching of his attackers.

By some twist of chance, his grubby fingers clutch tight on the arms of one of his attackers and he swung with every ounce of his weight, tearing the beast from its feet and driving it headlong into the earthen walls around them, and then he swung it round again battering the second ape as it failed to see the fell crescent motion that ended with its partner beaten head first into the dirt once more. Now Chris reeled, dizzy from blood loss and over exertion, his adrenaline able to carry him no more. As he fell he made the last conscious effort he could and aimed his fall to where he heard the cries of the ape he had hit and drove himself to the ground elbow first. Pain flared as a sickening crunch sounded under him. And then the hollow was silent.

Chris lay still, clinging to consciousness with a miserable need. He would not die here, he had decided it as so when he stood from that ditch. He would make this life worthwhile, specifics undecided. Now he was shaking as the world broadened once again. A scraping came from the entrance to the hollow and he tried to push himself up once more. “You still alive down here kid?” The graveley voice of Ray called from a silhouette ringed by daylight.

Chris just let out a barking laugh in answer that slowly blended with tears that streamed down his face to become a sound far more primal than either laughter or sobs, a sound of life fought for and bought at terrible prices.