The sky never cleared the entire time he walked, the red hue of smoke from the distant fires really turning this waking nightmare into hell itself. At least in color palette. The road out of Brighton was more of the same, more destroyed cars, more dried blood. More burned away homes, and more destroyed town. But something else began appearing as the town thinned away. Dark stains, almost like splatter patterns, full of chunks strewn among them. They looked like flesh, but they hadn’t rotted to this disturbing color. More desiccated and dried to crumbling dust.

The ratio of blood stains to these new spots though was horrifyingly in favor of blood. But slowly more and more of them appeared along the road, until finally they painted it entirely. As a roadblock became clear ahead. Militarized, with tanks and fortified positions. Yet all were shattered and tossed aside, and blood and black were mixed together. Craters and bullet holes in the road seemed to be filled and masked by the black dusty stains. But it could not hide the battle that took place here. Or the casualties. A thought that finally drove Seth to pick up a chunk of this desiccated flesh and see it for what it was.

“It… is a piece of them, what is left when they can no longer hold themselves together.”

Speaker had stayed silent till now, finally relaying information he had only just learned himself.

‘Then… this was the thunder from before.’

“It would seem so. Your military killed many of them before…”

Seth was shaking, sullen, and wide eyed at the death he was standing in. At the possibilities laid out and splattered about like malicious paint. Speaker stopped out of respect. Seth was scared of what they would find ahead now. But despite this fear, he had to walk on.

The line itself really was little more than a haphazardly placed roadblock, it just had armor support stacked behind it. The tanks though were ripped open like cans, armor plates shredded and whole turrets seemingly ripped off their mountings. Emplacements were crushed and slashed apart, concrete blockers caved and dashed to pieces. Seth continued through, seeing fewer and fewer black stains, and more and more blood.

A convoy was strewn about past the line, military moving up at the worst possible time, and civilians running away far too late. The only saving grace for Seth’s nerve was the torched state most of the vehicles were in. The fires seemed to have spread here and burned away the worst of the evidence. In fact a lot of the forest was down in this area. Burned away trees were strewn about along the road, and defined paths were cut across what was left of the forest floor. The creatures had swarmed through this area like a river. And showed no mercy.

As Seth finally passed the convoy, the road seemed to clear up, fewer and fewer vehicles left, with those only being military. In fact a few massive patches of black were dotted about, blood stains seemingly at their centers. Someone had put up a fight against them, but could only hold out so much.

Distance seemed to be the best medicine for Seth’s determination as he continued on into the next town. This one much less destroyed, but still in ruins. Damage from more than blunt force or claws was present. As if it were bombed. There was almost no blood, and plenty of stains of black among the rubble. The fires hadn't spread here yet, and a lot of the town still stood, so he hunkered down here to take stock and rest. And scrounging up a few more dry goods from the grocery stores.

This trend continued for days, with Seth camping out in the quiet nights when he wasn’t close to a town. The bed roll proving to be not as ratty as he thought it would be. And the ground not as crawly, though that had been clear from day one. Every place he passed was less and less destroyed, no blood in sight beyond maybe the random dear. But there were certainly more and more black stains present. The smoke from those fires even started to dissipate, though only really in the direction he walked.

After a few days he came upon a new sight. A torn and beaten field, not burned by the fires but trodden en mass. At the far end, a wave of helicopters was strewn about. Like they had all crashed at once. There was even a gash burned into the forest some ways away from the road that looked like a plane had gone down. Seth couldn’t understand what had happened. But he felt guilt for some reason, felt Speaker’s apprehension just looking at the scene. Something had gone very wrong.

Seth approached one close to the road, blades draped over the torn open canopy, hiding the fate of the pilots. The blood surrounding it left little to imagination. He put a hand to the crumpled chassis, it was cold both in life and in feeling. Its circuitry had been fried… but it was familiar somehow. It felt just like the radio back in Brighton.

“It has been overloaded… disrupted and distorted… like our Ark.”

Speaker was talking far grimmer than normal.

“The... monsters. They brought them down.”

Seth eyed the whole line up, some more torn and wreaked than his.

‘But… they can’t fly! …Right?’

Speaker seemed to lighten at Seth’s naiveté, but his grim attitude held.

“No… but their energies don’t need to. The power they have is much like yours, only with much less control. They must be able to siphon power under certain circumstances, or with certain stimuli. Not too dissimilar to your outburst before, except they have no guide or understanding of how to use it.”

Seth thought back to the first night, but couldn’t really understand what this all meant.

“Something for another time perhaps. There is a more pressing concern here.”

Seth felt Speaker shift his focus, tighten it beyond what he’d been taught to.

“See here. There are striations. Infinitesimal, but they are there. Marks on the wires, in their melt. It reads like a… fingerprint. Unique to an individual if not muddled by others. Though to the untrained and those not looking for it, it will look indistinct. Generalized. Like the one who siphoned the power from your village siphoned the power from this machine as well.”

Seth thought for a second, but realized quickly.

‘They… would think I did this?’

“If given a chance, and a reason. And with such loss already… It would be best to keep your powers to yourself if we make it out of this. You… You have taken on enough blame as it is, you should not be yoked with a burden you are far from at fault for.”

Seth understood, felt his focus wan back to normal, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit more guilt at all of this.

As days went by his situation grew dire. More and more towns were passed through, but each one more destroyed than the last. Some had seen intense combat, military holding back as best they could. Some areas were built up as full defensive lines, and some were just haphazard killboxes. One spot seemed purposely set up to funnel the monsters for someone to snipe them from afar. But the barriers had been disregarded entirely, and the sniper’s position was clear for Seth to see. A blood stained window with a smashed apart rifle wrapped round the sill. Whatever had happened, it was long over, and the town took the worst of the toll.

Seth walked up to what was left of the town’s grocery store, the smell was the greatest signifier to its condition but he had to be sure. Rotten produce, torn and burned packaging, mold and ash contaminated everything that had survived being bombed to smithereens. He slumped and continued on, the grumbling of his stomach too much to ignore.

Soon towns stopped even existing, as did the forests surrounding them. Vast fire scorched swaths dominated the road ahead, towns reduced to concrete slabs and defiant skeletons. A few burns continued to persist, keeping Seth’s face buried in his scarf, but his head was kept low by hunger and fatigue anyway. Power he had was running thin as well, an empty feeling in addition to the already present hunger pangs. And sources of power were even harder to find in useable order. Abandoned and burned cars don’t hold their batteries very well. What food he had left was running short, a few energy bars and water bottles left. And he knew the countermeasure took precedent over keeping him from feeling the fatigue of walking for so long. Thus the only permanent addition to his supplies was a walking stick borrowed from a surviving roadside stand. It kept him up, but only just. The rationing was wearing him down, the pain in his feet had started to numb away, but his joints started to creak for respite. And to top it all off he…

Seth stopped.

A low rumble over the horizon, like a distant stampede. The burned forest around him echoing with the sound, and shaking as it rose higher in an instant. A thunder, like before but almost encompassing the entire horizon ahead of him. He could feel it in the ground, see the defiant trees quake and flake. Someone was fighting, holding the line. And it gave him hope. He stopped at the ruins of a gas station, little more than a wall to lay against to keep out of the ash and embers around him. The thunder never abated, if anything it increased. Though his senses were numbed by his constant hunger, he could smell a tinge on the air, like metal and garlic. He was still far away, but the day was already too far gone. He scrunched up against the wall as the thunder rocked him to sleep. The same empty sleep he’d had since this all started.

Seth awoke on the… twentieth day of walking? He had lost track and could barely remember it all at this point, but he knew he still needed to keep moving. His food was out, and the thunder was drowning out almost everything else that could still make noise. He could hear the cracking of rifles, the explosions of shells, the roar and thunder of the monsters. He even swore he could make out some shouting during lulls. He was getting close, but to what he didn’t fully know.

As he closed in the fighting was peaking, with the air and ground shaking from the unending torrent that was before him. His heartbeat was drowned out, but he felt it rumble in his chest with every desperate step forward. But before he could see his final destination through the decimated forest and metallic smelling fog of war. Before he could finally see his salvation… the gunfire abated down to nothing.

Shouts on the wind signaled it wasn’t the end of whoever was fighting on, but the direction seemed… off. High. Finally the forest began to abate to little more than stumps and the smoke to wisping away puffs. Allowing him to see just the reason for this acoustic oddity. For as far as he could see, curving toward and around him, there was a wall.

It was tall, bigger than any building he’d ever seen in person, not quite skyscraper but way too big to just be plopped down where it was. But horrifyingly… it was stained. A gradient silver up to its rim, and that flaking desiccated black to its base. Along its top Seth could see some kind of machinery leaning over that stained front, looking like turrets from the smoke still trailing from the twin rotors on either side of them. Oddly there seemed to be platforms, spaced a far distance from each other along the wall’s absurd… continuous length. They jutted out over the edge and had thick struts keeping up a relatively thin platform. He could make out someone on the nearest platform as there was no railing or lip covering it. In fact it seemed like it was made of glass, or something see-through. He could only barely make out people on the wall proper, seeing little more than heads move about over the lip.

The ground before all this was that same pitch black, blasted and almost unrecognizable as land. The wall was seemingly placed right on top of a town, with a sizable ruin separating Seth from it. Though it was little more than rubble at this point, with every surface the wall could see being pockmarked with bullet and shrapnel holes. Though… there seemed to also be dug outs and caves in the rubble. Dark spaces burrowed into every place they could be.

Seth was awestruck at what he had just walked into, the devastation and the relief countering each other. All lost in the realization that he had to somehow get over that. Weighed down with this, but still beholden to his own now regretted resolve, he inched forward. Quiet as he could be, desperate as he should be, as slowly as he could allow himself to be. Franticly he scanned each dark hole, crevice, and still standing doorway. That possibilities running rampant, and his heart beating his chest apart. Only a few feet into town he was startled by shouting from the wall. He couldn’t make it out, but it was drowned away by the beat in his ears. Had they spotted him? Could they even send help to get him? He scanned the wall, but still couldn’t make out a sign. He could only hope, but even that was thinning.

He inched forward more and more, avoiding loose pieces of rubble and debris, avoiding every noise no matter how small. His breath was shallow, held, burning. His feet beginning to feel the ache they lived in with every hesitated step. His grip on that walkingstick tight enough to bleed. He was starting to feel the gravity of just what he had undertaken, only halfway to the wall but still in the dead center of the town.

Finally a haggard breath stopped him, needing more air than he could manage. Exhaustion finally taking hold in the face of a truth. He was out of power. The weight of his body, that same drifting pull downward. The voices were more distant than they’d ever been, he could feel what they felt anymore, but he knew they had kept this from him. They had been feeding him power to keep him going. Splitting it… letting the countermeasures laps. Just so he could keep moving. So he could make it out of this hell. But now… it was all gone. And so was that hope.

He dropped his head, fatigue, hunger, and sorrow cutting his resolve to tatters less than a mile from salvation. He couldn't do it, he couldn't move, couldn't reach the end of this god damned place. He wasn’t going to be a hero, he wasn’t even going to survive. He’d failed to even start trying to make this right, and it all fell over him like so much death waiting for him. But as he tried to cry for his failure, for losing it all so close… he saw something on the ground ahead of him. A shadow.

He pulled his head up with a last gasp of fearful speed, eyes too wide or what he could take. Yet, saw nothing. Scanning around for anything like it was a mad hallucination, all he saw was the same blasted hell he walked into. But… he was only stopped as a voice broke his fear.

“No, up here.” It was a whisper, but it felt softer than he could ever expect.

Seth looked up, blinded somewhat by the noonish sun, but clear as day he saw her. She was older than he was, but not an adult. But she wore a bodysuit, armored up and camouflaged grey and grey. And it even had an embroidered round shield patched to her chest with velcro. Her dirty blond hair was tied up behind her, and her eyes were almost orange in color. And... she was flying! Or at least hovering over him. Seth was dumbstruck, it was like he was looking at an angel, though she didn’t have wings. She was a super, probably a member of the League, but-

“Hey! This is NOT the time to be daydreaming!”

She whispered harshly down at him, breaking the illusion.

“Take my hand quick, we need to get out of here!”

She stretched out an armored glove down to him, back again to that angel come to spare him from this hell. He hesitated, he couldn’t help losing what little focus he had to the relief breaking him down. Shakily, he stretched a hand to meet hers, hope rising over fatigue and hunger. But this hope, this relief, it was all too great a force over him. And his hand absentmindedly released from the walking stick it was held tight to, letting it drop to the ground. With a reverberating *thunk*. Seth went wide eyed, the girl went wide eyed, and a pair of eyes opened to take in this scene. Several… pairs… of eyes.

Slow menacing claws started grasping at the edges of openings. Toothy maws edged out of shadows. Bulks of scales and long feared horror pulled themselves free of their hides. The first to appear clawed out of a still intact doorframe. At least seven feet tall, grey scaly skin burnt black and cracked, and a faint red glow behind slit green eyes. Its claws and teeth didn’t gleam, caked in black dust and choked by burn. And… and its expression was something between restraining desperation and wild rage. Just waiting to- *RRRRRAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH*

It burst forward, screeching more than roaring, and bounding like it was the only way it knew how to move. Its claws stretching wide, wanting nothing… nothing but Seth! Fear, adrenaline, grim perception, it was all too slow to even draw out this oncoming death. But in spite of this merciless speed, the girl was down in front of him faster than anything he’d ever seen, hands counter thrusting against it. A laden thrust, holding and forming an orange light around the both of them, a dome, a shield! The creature slammed into the orange barrier like a freight train, rebounding with a sickening snap of just about every bone it had. Then a second hit rebounded from the other side. Seth jerked about to see a group of three slamming into the barrier, instinctively falling back onto the ground and shielding himself away.

Then the rest slammed the barrier, the horde that hid among the rubble swarming and crashing against the dome like rabid animals. Those that couldn’t get close enough swiped and dug at it, others tried to chew it with forcibly unhinged and tearing jaws. But all of them… every one of them… they all stared down at Seth.

They all bore down on him alone, and all stared locked in his fear, on his weakness. And all of them… with familiar eyes. From on the ground he couldn’t escape seeing them, fear telling him to look away and run but nothing he did would let him. These… these were his friends, his neighbors, his town. And some of them could even be…

He stopped. One of the ones forced to the ground, chewing at the force field was crying, not audibly, but tears were running down its face. It slipped its jaw down and head butted the barrier, eyes stuck straight ahead at him… hazel eyes.

The world melted away, the beat of the swarm on the translucent barrier died away. As Seth stared into eyes he knew. Tears flowing ever still as it tried to force itself through the impermeable barrier, washing the dust down its snout like reverse mascara. Against his fear, against what will he had, he inched toward it, reality drowned out and relegated away. A hand tried to rise to finally clarify it, finally make the truth absolute, but the moment could only last so long. A whistling cut over the cacophony, the whistle of incoming ordinance.

Above the dome, airburst shells exploded, raining high velocity streams of burning shrapnel. The smoking pieces of ever burning metal shot down and perforated the horde. Several lit on fire almost immediately, the shrapnel burning them from the inside out. The shells kept raining down. One recoiled from the dome and grabbed at the burning piece of metal, trying to dig it out of itself. It tore at its own flesh, wrenched at the bone it stuck in. But it recoiled again, this time grabbing at itself as if to keep something in. Before exploding into an electrically charged spray of dry blood and dust. Several burst around the dome before the first ran away, back into the shadows of the rubble. A piece struck at the hazel eyed one and it screeched, scurrying away into a nearby dug out. Group by group, one by one, they scattered or burst until there was nothing left… but burning white smoke and a stained orange dome.

The girl looked around, she couldn’t see much, but it was enough. She let the field go, showering the both of them in dust before scooping her half gone quarry up. She hucked him over her shoulder in one smooth motion and lifted off the ground. Seth could do nothing but stare back at the charred, stained, and still smoking battlefield he was just pulled from. At his dust stained hands, as they hanged limp in the aerial wake. And at what he could only assume to have been his mom.