Eye Contact
A/N: Thank a 3 am nightmare. Sorrynotsorry in advance.
A/N 2: Edited so it doesn't read like third grade composition. Except for the Dickensian/Hemingway sentences. I regret nothing.
"They're probably just dicking around in the broom closet with a bottle of Everclear again."
She watched as he took the van keys from the rack.
"I don't think you should go alone, Zack," she whispered, eyes darting out the nearest window into the night. "It's so dark out."
He laughed, light and lilting, as the kitchen clock ticked.
"The General is here with you, Ciss. I'll be back in like, ten minutes tops, and those other two bozos are due back, anyway, so don't worry your curls straight."
The front door slammed behind him. She heard keys jangle as he locked it, and the porch door creaked open and jammed shut after him. She watched intently from the kitchen window, as he entered the garage, as the windowless black van backed out, as the garage door shut, as the van crunched away over the gravel driveway, onto the rural road, and into the night.
The clock ticked on, as she watched the dust settle around the bend of the dirt road, into the treeline. The lone flickering streetlamp, bolted to a tall telephone post, left an uneven yellowy pool in the dirt of the road.
She shivered.
"The outpost again?"
She nearly jumped out of her skin as the General emerged from the hallway, booted steps silent. She nodded, and he poured himself a cup of coffee. He took a short sip, blew on it, and took a longer gulp as he strode to stand beside her.
"This tastes like shit."
"It's been on the burner since noon, sir."
The clock ticked on as they stared out into the stillness of the night.
"Late November, and no fog. Fair will benefit from the deviant weather, at the least." The General took another long sip of bad coffee. "But I find it strange that Tseng and Hewley are three hours late, without contact."
She watched as he frown into the white mug, eyes blazing.
The red phone rang out, shattering the silence, and her heart leapt into her throat. Still frowning, the General strode over, and answered it.
"Sitrep."
His eyes narrowed.
"I'll be there shortly."
His pianist fingers set the receiver back on the cradle, left the half-full mug in the sink. He went back into the hallway, and a quiet rustle of leather and steel called out to her from the shadow of his open bedroom door. He emerged five minutes later, sheathed sword in gloved hand, armor glinting.
"Situation in the Basement. I expect to return before midnight."
He tugged on a strap. Something clinked.
"If I do not, do not leave the premises until reinforcement arrives."
"Sir... if you don't return, isn't it better if I evacuate immediately?"
He looked at her long and hard. She flinched. He looked away into the starlit trees.
"If I do not return, the outside will likely be an irradiated wasteland. Unenhanced, your survival percentages are negligible."
He disappeared into the pantry, followed only by the clunk of the trapdoor into the cellar door below. From there, a two-ton keycarded blast door would whisper open, and lead him away, far away, through many other locked doors, to the Basement.
The clock ticked on, and the General's cup of abandoned coffee might have stopped steaming two minutes, or two hours ago, for all she knew.
She moved listlessly towards the kitchen sink, when her head turned sharply towards a distant scuffle on the road outside.
Three children stumbled into the glare of the streetlight; two boys, one girl. The boys were arguing, and the girl was crying, but they were all looking over one shoulder down the dark road as they made a beeline for the house.
They approached slowly, stopping about twenty feet from the kitchen door. It was closer than the porch.
She couldn't make out any of the quiet, furious hissing of the older blond boy, or the terse replies of the shorter brunette boy. The girl sobbed silently, trailing slowly behind them, and all three were dirty.
Suddenly, the blond's head shot up, eyes on the treeline, and he bolted for the door.
"Please, let us in! We won't stay long!" He pleaded quietly through the door, and she could hear his hands pulling on the locked handle. "Please!"
She hesitated a moment, thinking of red ink, protocols, and paperwork, before unlocking the door and letting the boy in. He nearly slammed it shut, stopping only at the last inch to close it noiselessly.
"What's going on?"
The boy only looked silently out the window at the other boy and girl still outside, jaw and fists clenching white in the dim light.
The brunette boy now tugged doggedly on the girl's arm, but her legs went out. He tried to drag her over the bare dirt, towards the house.
He suddenly went still, peering out into the dark. He redoubled his efforts, probably seeing something come out into the open. She tried to make out what the shadowed thing was, but the brunette suddenly abandoned the girl and ran for the door.
"Get up, get up, get up," the blond boy muttered at the window. The girl still lay sobbing in the dirt.
Some voiceless instinct screamed inside her, and she let the brunette boy in without hesitation, slamming the door and deadbolts closed in time for something hard and huge to smash into it.
"It was Marlene's choice."
The blond had moved away from the window, to whisper softly to the brunette. The two boys held each other on the floor, eyes downcast and glazed.
She looked out the window from where she stood, and saw that the girl was no longer sobbing. Two, or six, or ten, or twenty huge shadowy things were clustered and swarming where the girl had been.
"Get away from the window," the brunette whispered to the floor.
The clock ticked on, and she moved slowly away. When her feet had wandered onto the cold tile next to the boys, she fingered her bracer and the unfurling warmth of a fire materia bled into her bicep.
An enormous fireball erupted in the midst of the swarming mass. Between the licks of flame, all she saw were hard, dark eyes, long tapering claws, and blood and broken bones in the dirt.
They skittered madly in the dimness, on two legs, on five, on seven, on eight.
"You shouldn't have done that," whispered the brunette.
As one, the flames died.
As one, the skittering stopped.
She was looking, when the moon finally broke free of its shroud, and she saw.
Some were tall, some short. Differing numbers of legs, with differing legs, some bending this way or that, or not at all. They were all shadowy, and skittering, and spidery strange, and glistening here and there in the moonlight with black, black blood.
The clock ticked on, and they were all looking at her with one eye, three eyes, six eyes, a thousand; hard and dark and unflinching.
They were all completely unharmed from the spell.
She went cold when she saw one rush, skittering, on two strange, strange legs, right at the nearest floor to ceiling window. It stopped just short, the fine hairs of its body brushing hard against the glass, and its single great eye fixed on her, the compound surface glittering faintly.
The clock ticked on, and she stared, transfixed. She thought about closing the curtains, about brewing a new pot of coffee.
"Don't worry," she whispered to the boys. "The windows are treated so no one can see in, but we can see out."
"They're no one," whispered the brunette to the floor. "And they still got that SOLDIER."
"The glass is two inches thick, and bullet proof," she whispered to no one.
It was midnight. The red phone was silent, the road was empty, and a thick, greasy plume of smoke rose in the distance. She thought about the pantry and the rations in the cellar below.
"Whatever you do, miss," whispered the blond, "...don't make eye contact."