CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was five o'clock on Friday morning, the last day of August when the weary group approached the city of Chicago.
Though they were exhausted and weak by the time the city skyscrapers came into view, they found a renewed sense of hope as the city drew nearer and signs of life, the first in days, were beginning to take shape. It did indeed seem that the creatures had not migrated towards this part of the country.
The monsters had first appeared along the West, South, and East, and although they spread like a disease across the entire planet, it did force uncountable millions from their homes and send them migrating towards the safety zones.
While Lewis led his group along highways and past many empty vehicles, some collided and some sideways or rolled over on the sides of the roads, the highways around Chicago as far as Cassandra could see were jam packed with perfectly aligned vehicles, all empty, as though everyone simply abandoned their cars during a major traffic jam.
One travel lane on the entire highway was completely void of cars and large, handwritten signs were propped up directing pedestrians to the safe zone. The guard rail was lined with pictures, telephone numbers, addresses, personal belongings, and a myriad of hastily written "have you seen me?" signs.
The weary group walked faster, feeling excited for the first time in days. It did not take long before Cassandra could see a vast migration of people flooding into the city, carrying with them all that they could. As the group was directed via spray painted wooden signs down an entrance ramp, they quickly hit back end of a group of refugees waiting for their opportunity to enter the safe zone.
A massive military perimeter was erected all around the city. Cassandra glanced to each side and saw a line of military vehicles and soldiers, heavily armed, directing the people into the safety zone.
"My God," Carlos muttered under his breath.
Cassandra's excitement quickly fizzled and any hope she had about the safe zone at all, which wasn't much to begin with, was gone.
To her, it looked like less of a safe zone and more like an over-crowded last stand of the human race. The sounds of people from inside the walled off zone was almost deafening unto itself. Cassandra could hear voices talking, singing, shouting, talking all buzzing together filling the early morning air. Armed guards from every branch of the military patrolled every inch of the perimeter in pairs.
Cassandra gripped Lewis's shoulder shakily as they were pushed and shoved in the massive crowd waiting at one of the entrance gates.
Hundreds of people formed massive lines all around her, each clinging to their families and possessions, desperate not to be separated amongst the crowds.
As Cassandra walked through an underpass that was covered in spray paint and "missing" signs, and came out onto the city street, she watched hundreds of soldiers filter the massive crowds into half a dozen separate lines onto different streets that led to the buildings beyond.
The line of tanks and jeeps and transports created a makeshift wall down the street as far as Cassandra could see.
Very quickly, Cassandra was hustled off into one line while Lewis greeted several officers that had approached him, shook hands, and was directed off to a different location.
He turned back to her for a moment and smiled as reassuringly as he could although he looked worried as well.
"Lewis!" Cassandra called to him in a worried 'don't leave me here' tone.
"It's alright. I'll meet up with you inside, okay. Go ahead."
Cassandra did not feel comforted by his words. Looking around at the crowd of sobbing, desperate people, she highly doubted Lewis would be able to find her in between the many buildings of the safety zone.
She looked over her shoulder and saw Carlos trying to fight to stay on his feet as fearful people continued to push and shove to get to the entrance that much faster.
"Carlos!" Cassandra called to him.
The two were able to get to one another before a soldier filed them off forcibly into one line.
"You ok?" Carlos asked.
"Uh-huh," she murmured quickly. "You?"
"Guess so," he shrugged.
They stayed next to each other as the line moved forward slowly.
When Cassandra got a clear view of the little opening between two vehicles that served as entrance number six to the safety zone, her eyes grew wide. Guards were forcibly searching everyone that entered and she could see people fighting for their weapons. Her hand slipped unconsciously to her waist and groped the butt of her only weapon.
"Cassy?" Carlos turned to her as he pulled on her arm. She refused to budge.
She kept her eyes locked on the guards searching people for weapons. She felt more vulnerable now than ever before as she and Carlos slowly approached the check point. Silently, she considered her options.
"Carlos, I can't…" She started to whisper to Carlos.
"What are you doing?" Carlos insisted. "We have to go in."
"I don't want them to take my gun," Cassandra protested in a nearly silent whisper.
He nodded and looked around, clearly contemplating their options.
"We have to go in," Carlos said grittily.
"I know... I know... I just..." she started.
Suddenly, someone from behind her pushed angrily forward then hopped around her as she stepped to the side to let others pass. A fight quickly broke out as the armed man tried to make a dash for the entrance gate. Several soldiers, diverted by the fight, left an opening that numerous people tried to run through.
"Come on!" Cassandra said quickly, yanking on Carlos' arm and quickly weaving her way through the crowd.
Several people took advantage of the lack of security and charged in. While many soldiers did their best to stop the small crowd to check them, Cassandra shot through quickly and bolted down the next two blocks, Carlos in tow.
They ran into the safe zone and darted around a corner, the guards still too busy stopping a mob fight that they were unable to stop half a dozen people who ran in as a group. Cassandra and Carlos headed off quickly in a different direction.
"I just..." she started to say, but as she rounded the corner onto the street, her words drifted off.
Although she had seen the reports from the safe zone, actually being inside one was a totally different feeling. It was like nothing she could have imagined.
The wide four lane street was absolutely jam packed with people and belongings. Sleeping bags, mattresses, bed sheets and pillows, even piles of clothes lined the streets. People were stacked together like sardines in a can.
They huddled together all over the streets, and on door steps of overcrowded buildings, they slept on the piles of clothes, even cardboard and garbage. Buildings overflowed with people, and almost every window was either open or smashed out.
There was minimal electricity, enough to light strings of street lights and keep some lights on in a few buildings, but it was obvious by the amount of people hanging out windows, fanning themselves, that there was no more comfort to be found inside than out on the street.
It would be impossible for Lewis to find them in all of this, Cassandra was certain. She and Carlos walked in shock along the streets, staring around trying to absorb the sight. Carlos instinctively evaluated almost everyone he saw for medical needs, and within a minute began rattling off conditions and injuries he noted.
"I've got to see what medical resources they have available." Cassandra shot him a wide eyed look. "These people need help."
Cassandra found it far too difficult to adjust to. She wanted the peace and quiet of solitude and as she looked around, her feelings that coming to the safe zone would be anything but safe were confirmed.
Soldiers carrying machine guns patrolled the streets on foot, keeping tabs on the population. One solider glanced at Cassandra and she lowered her eyes to hide from him, certain that he knew that she had snuck past the entrance check point with her gun still hidden at her back.
She and Carlos turned down an adjacent street and wandered the next row of buildings .
The sights along each street and alleyway and in every building was the same. The safety zone was packed, and as Cassandra and Carlos scanned the zone from east boarder to west border and halfway back again, they could not seem to find a decent place to rest in all of the thirty block radius.
The evening soon drew near and at each end of the safety zone a dinner food line was forming.
Cassandra and Carlos, having not been able to catch breakfast or lunch, filed promptly into the dinner line and waited for three hours before they got to the food truck. As with everywhere in the safety zone, soldiers kept order at the food stations as well, watching over the crowds to be certain no fighting broke out.
Eyeing the armed men as she took her food, Cassandra felt her spine tingle. The hard looks on the soldiers' faces offered no sense of security at all. They did not look protective, or even at comforted by being within the walls of the safe zone.
She thought they looked ready to kill anyone that stepped out of line, and she began to wonder exactly which animal was most dangerous.
She and Carlos took their rations in a paper bag and hustled off to at least find somewhere to sit and eat. They walked back through the crowd, past several more officers and turned back towards the south entrance gate where they had last seen Lewis.
"I don't want to be here," Cassandra whispered to Carlos as they walked.
"Well, I think it's the best place we could be right now." He said promptly, tearing open the stapled top of his grab bag of food.
"Really?" Cassandra whispered in a shocked tone.
"I do. There's plenty of protection here. We're safe enough until they are able to stop these animals."
"Carlos, do you really think they will stop them?"
He stopped mid bite and shrugged towards her. "Of course. You know they're bombing."
She gaped her mouth but said nothing. She did not share his optimism.
She slunk to the ground and ate her food in silence while staring up and down the street hoping to spy Lewis. They dined quietly as the night fell.
Unable to find a good sleeping spot, Cassandra and Carlos pressed their backs to each other on the street curb and slept sitting upright.
In the morning, a chime rang off at about seven o'clock, indicating that breakfast time had arrived. Cassandra and Carlos quickly walked off down the street, trying to file into line to get the morning meal, however, when they had reached the food station after one o'clock, even lunch rations had been depleted as well.
"Come here," Carlos said, eyeing some soldiers near the food line after a disappointing wait for a meal.
"No, Carlos, no…." Cassandra protested, but he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along with him.
"Uh, excuse me gentleman… and lady," he acknowledged the officers before him. "I'd like to offer to help."
The officers stared at him in silence. Cassandra watched with wide wary eyes. Carlos paused briefly and then fidgeted in his pockets for his medical ID badge.
"I...uhh… I'm a doctor, and I noticed how many people here need medical attention."
The officers remained silent, eyeing Carols and Cassandra with a disinterested look.
"This is my…. my nurse, Cassandra Reynolds. I'd like to speak with whoever your physicians are."
"Sir," one of the officers finally spoke up after a long, awkward silence. "Thank you for the offer, but we have all the support staff we need. Everything is under control. Just remain calm, find yourself a good place to rest, and we'll be out of here soon."
The curt speech sounded almost robotic. Carlos opened his mouth to protest, but Cassandra pulled him away.
She did not believe the officer's words for a moment; the response sounded so scripted that she could only conclude they were ordered to tell people the same thing, or they really did not have any clue what was going on. She was concerned the response was a little of both.
Cassandra followed Carlos, who was frustrated by the response, down the streets as he asked every person he saw that appeared sick or injured if they had any medical supplies of any kind.
For the next week, Cassandra did whatever Carlos told her to as he worked to help people. They quickly learned the best places to wait in line for food, and at least managed to eat one meal a day.
At all other times, they raided the buildings all around them for any type of medicines, everything from Advil to antibiotics to bandaging materials.
By the end of seven days, Cassandra had been covered in blood, vomit, and bodily fluids she did not want to process. She watched elderly die in their beds of starvation and they had found numerous dehydrated corpses. Everyday people died of stabs and disease.
Cassandra and Carlos had fallen into a routine, she realized one day. They would grab their morning meal as quickly as possible, walk the perimeter looking for Lewis, then head into the main district and try to tend to medical needs as best as they could.
They knew which buildings to avoid due to gangs protecting their own, and they knew which buildings were the least touched of all.
They had worked out the best way to travel efficiently and as safely as possible, but they were running out of any kinds of medical supplies.
It did not take long for the optimism about a quick end to the infestation to die. They no longer received any news, any iota of a hint of what was transpiring beyond the gates.
One popular past time many people living within the slum conditions of the safe zone had was to camp out on the many roof tops available to them and watch the vacant distances beyond the city in all directions.
They would look for signs of life, signs of what direction life was headed, signs of the end of the battle.
People did find comfort in the fact that there seemed to be no hordes of alien monsters anywhere within sight that binoculars and telescopes could offer.
While many thought that no news was good news, many more reminded the rest that no news was simply no news.
There were still new fires visible, new explosions far off in the distance with flames that would reach miles into the sky, and black smoke that would rise up for hours.
Most of the fires started late at night. Sometimes anyone watching would see an airplane pass far overhead, most of the time, they did not, so people theorized that a massive ground battle was still under way.
Each and every person in the safe zone seemed to cling to whatever hope they could to keep them going; Cassandra wasn't quite sure yet what her hope was.
New people arrived almost every day, pushing an already overstressed area beyond its limits.
Each day, Cassandra watched hopeful refugees of an alien battle no one understood be whisked into the fenced-off zone and look around with shock and astonishment while they still clung to hope as tightly as they did their belongings and families.
It took but a few days for the hope to fade, for starvation to set in, for fear of dying trapped in a filthy slum to become the new reality.
Military officers patrolled the perimeter streets, but were vacant in the main district.
Cassandra wondered how many more soldiers there could possibly be in all the military in all the world to allow for a war on the outside while keeping the chaos to a minimum on the inside. She wondered how many other safe zones there were just like that one, or if they were the last of an entire population.
Along the perimeter of the safe zone, guards worked hard to keep order around the clock. Food lines formed twenty four hours a day, many people sleeping in line at night hoping to get breakfast. It did not go unnoticed that meal sizes were shrinking while the population of refugees creamed into an area a fraction of the size of Lower Manhattan, was growing.
A plague of a different sort spread within the borders of the safety zone, and Cassandra watched its progression alongside Carlos.
It was a madness that swept over the people. Over the first few days after Cassandra's arrival, she could see the disease that was taking hold of the population.
At first glance she thought the majority of people within the border of the zone were just depressed, fearful, and feeling helpless, very much as she was.
However, by the time a few days had passed, she had absorbed her environment more fully and began to understand that she was looking at many people clinging to their last ounce of sanity from many long weeks, even months inside the camp.
The walls of every building in the zone were plastered with the same sort of signs that had decorated the guard rails on the way in to the city.
Many cardboard barricades that covered windows of the buildings also had scribbled words upon them as their creators hoped they would run into lost loved ones that had found their way to the shelter.
Telephone numbers were spray painted everywhere, however cellular phones were no longer working. People sat in the streets, some clutching photographs, some holding their families, and everywhere she turned, Cassandra saw only a fading hope.
Many theorized and wondered, but in reality, no one knew what was going on beyond the perimeter; only that in the visible distance, there was nothing. There was no life, there were no alien monsters, there was no sign of battle.
That, at the very least, offered some comfort.
Cassandra huffed and chuckled softly herself as she searched through a pile of mostly clean looking clothes thrown into a street, trying to find anything that would fit her so she could change out of days old, blood covered clothes.
"What is it?" Carlos asked.
She held up a t-shirt to check for its size.
"I wanted to be a fashion designer. Seems so stupid now. I wanted to make high end clothes for the fashion industry, and now," Cassandra said with a detached tone, "here I am scraping the streets for used clothes because I'm covered in other people's blood."
Carlos stayed silent as Cassandra sobbed softly.
There was nothing to say. She gathered up a change of clothes and stayed with her as she found a dark nook to change in. He put his back to her, watching the streets all around vigilantly.
They went on again, heading out of the main district of the safe zone and slowly making their way towards the perimeter once again.
They heard a scream echo and tried to figure out where it was coming from. No one else even seemed to look up. Carlos and Cassandra stalked through a back alley cautiously and came across a bleeding and beaten naked girl.
They moved in to help her, and Cassandra squeeze her hand as the girl sobbed.
"We have to get out of here," Cassandra said through a teary gaze as she held the rape victim's hand while Carlos helped her ass best as he could with his own dwindling supplies.
"Where is Lewis? We need to find him and we need to leave."
"I don't know. I don't see how. They'll shoot us if we try to sneak out; you've seen that."
Carlos was right. People had been shot for trying to leave, but Cassandra did not want to stay within the confines of the hellish place.
She decided, as she clutched a crying girl younger than she, that she preferred dealing with the attacking hordes of deadly animals over the cramped and dangerous situation inside the safe zone.
"Hey, yo! What've we got here?" A voice interrupted her thoughts.
Cassandra and Carlos looked up to see four men approaching. They stalked smugly towards them, cackling and laughing.
They carried what looked like shivs. Carlos stood up between the men and Cassandra and the young girl.
"I didn't say we was done with her." One of them said looking down at the sobbing girl. "But…uh… thanks for bringing us another fine piece of tasty ass."
The group laughed. Carlos stepped forward; Cassandra stood up, hand reaching to her back.
"Now, look," Carlos snapped. "Just back off."
The men laughed and spit at Carlos. One of them punched him hard and he dropped to the ground with a gasp. They turned on Cassandra and she pulled out the weapon.
"Stop! Stay away from me."
They stopped in their tracks and smiled with an unconcerned look on their face. They could see Cassandra's hands shaking, but she stood her ground.
"I'll shoot." She warned as one of the men strode forward.
"Where'd you get that, Babe? You tough enough to actually use that?"
Cassandra clenched her jaw. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat.
She glanced for a split second towards Carlos who was pulling himself up off the ground and the man used the fraction of a moment diversion to lunge at her.
Cassandra screamed and struggled with the man as the rest of the gang moved in. The gun went off.
Cassandra wasn't even sure if she had pulled the trigger or not, but the man fell backwards, gasping and gurgling. In a second, he collapsed on the ground, blood pooling from his chest and out of his mouth.
He gagged and choked for a few seconds and fell silent as the gun clattered to the ground next to him.
Carlos stood up, Cassandra dropped to the ground to grab for the weapon. The other men in the gang ran off.
"Not a safe place at all, is it?" A voice said to Cassandra.
She lifted her eyes and found herself feeling very tiny as she eyed two men approaching, armed with baseball bats.
Underneath their dirty skin and ruffled hair, they looked like at one point they could have been businessmen wearing expensive imported suites and driving high class cars on their way to their big city job.
The two men stood awkwardly close to Cassandra and stared intently at her as one reached down towards her.
She felt like a little child suddenly and just wanted to curl up and cry. She held her breath and pulled back, her hand landing on the gun immediately
"You okay, there honey? Don't worry," he laughed casually, "I'm not gonna' hurt you."
"Just making sure you're okay," the other said softly.
She watched their eyes look her up and down from head to toe. Her heart pounded so hard it was hurting her chest, and she tightened her grip on the weapon.
"Don't talk much do you?" One man said with a smile while the other grabbed for her and the other girl.
"Hey! Back off!" Carlos yelled, approaching from behind Cassandra, finally on his feet.
"It's alright man, it's alright." One of them said as he held his palms out. The other man helped Cassandra and the other girl to their feet.
"Thanks," she whispered.
"I didn't mean to scare you. Are you alright?" He said apologetically.
She nodded quickly.
"You better keep that tight on you," the man said, eyeing the gun Cassandra still clutched. He slipped his own shirt over the young girl as casually as though it was something he did every day. "You'll need it in here."
"I can't believe this is what the world is coming to." Carlos shook his head slowly, muttering.
"It's all we have." Cassandra whispered.
"What?" Carlos said, tipping his head as though straining to hear her words.
"Nothing."
Suddenly a great commotion stirred up in the streets behind them.
Carlos and Cassandra whirred around to see what was going on. Almost as routine as lining up for food or restrooms, was fighting.
It appeared this time that three men were fighting with four more. The men jumped onto each other, shouting and yelling, cursing at each other and throwing punches. One man dropped to the ground and was kicked by two more before others jogged over to break up the fight.
She was not sure what the fight was about, and did not particularly want to know. She sighed and lowered her eyes as the fight was quelled and turned to walk away.
Carlos watched the man that had been kicked pull his bloody torso off the ground, gripping his side, and limp off.
Carlos and Cassandra brought the young girl out in another direction and Cassandra found some clothes for her. She sat in silence and said nothing for hours.
After a long while, a sobbing woman, shouting in a language Cassandra did not understand came dashing over grabbing for the girl.
The girl got up and was quickly hustled off by the woman, who Cassandra could only assume was a mother, aunt, or someone familiar at the very least. The girl obviously understood the woman's ranting sobs and had no problem being hustled off with her.
Cassandra knew what was driving the people in the zone mad.
It was not being crammed into a tiny, strange area. It was not even the fighting for a place to sleep, or the squabbling over food. It wasn't even the crimes or the deaths.
She decided it was not even the loss of all that they had known that was causing the savage ache within the hearts of all the people.
She stared down to the ground sadly as she thought about the madness. It was the hope that was killing them all.
She suddenly felt as though the safe zone truly was the last stand of the human race. The hope that everyone clung to, was lost.
There would be no freedom from the walls of the safe zone. Cassandra had the unstoppable sinking feeling that the safe zone was to be mankind final holdout.
She sat on the sidewalk at an empty space Carlos watched her keenly. He too seemed to share in her thoughts and they sat and quietly discussed the future way of life.
It was a depressing subject. Her mind filled with thoughts of returning home and finding it magically pieced back together and all that she knew was still there waiting for her return.
She sighed deeply as she realized that would never happen, and her thoughts drifted back into her conversation with Carlos.
She stared up at him and then saw a small group of military striding through the street. Her eyes shifted and her face brightened.
"Lewis!" She exclaimed in an excited whisper.
Carlos swung around as Cassandra popped up off the group and called to Lewis again.
From the street, Lewis turned upon hearing his name. He smile widely and darted towards his friends. Cassandra threw her arms around him and he held her for a moment then shook hands with Carlos.
"How you doing? You guys ok?" He asked with great concern.
They nodded half heartedly.
"Doing as well as can be expected." Carlos said quietly then asked, "What's going on out there?"
Cassandra smirked, halfway not caring and not wanting to know, and halfway certain she was not going to like the answer Lewis could produce.
Lewis raised his eyebrows and tipped his head. He cast his eyes around to be sure no one was close enough to overhear.
"Truth is I don't know guys. My orders are just the same as every one else I've met. We're to keep this area secure."
"Secure from the bugs, or from each other?" Cassandra said crisply.
"Both," he said with a sad sigh.
"Jesus," Carlos whispered. "They're not even trying to fight the creatures, are they?"
Lewis nodded, "Yeah, they are. I've heard they're dropping nukes. I don't know how true it is, but that's what I've heard. They are bombing, though."
True or not, the news did at least offer some hope for a return to the world. What would be left of the outside world when the population was allowed to return back to it was questionable at best, of course, but still, to hear Lewis talk about what he knew and had heard, was the most amount of comfort that Cassandra had heard in a long time.
"I'll let you know if I find out anything more." Lewis assured them both.
They walked slowly together as Lewis maintained his patrol and discussed the way of life inside the zone.
"Just be careful in here, okay. Stay sharp and stay together." His eyes shifted to Cassandra. "You still have what I gave you?"
She nodded quickly and silently and shifter her eyes around. "How can we find you again?" Cassandra asked quickly.
"Let's pick a meeting spot and time." Carlos suggested.
The trio decided on the best place and time to try to find each other and they agreed to meet there as often as possible to check in with each other and be sure they were all alright.
Lewis promised to try to have updates as often as possible. They would also meet in the designated place in the event of an emergency.
Feeling much better after seeing Lewis and discussing their plans, Cassandra walked with Carlos quietly through the packed streets as they separated from Lewis who returned to his duties. They searched around for a place to rest and eventually settled in on a flight of stairs at the side of a building.
"Great," Carlos muttered as the skies opened up with a heavy rain.
They did not get much sleep on the stairs that night. They stayed awake mostly watching the lightening light up the sky and the thunder clap over their heads while the rain poured down.
Sometime during the night a cold wind picked up and Cassandra and Carlos huddled together for some warmth.
Fall was quickly approaching and the weather would soon turn chilly and eventually cold.
Cassandra wondered as she waited in line for breakfast the next morning, how the people would fare trying to survive in the streets during the winter, or if it would even come to that.
She shrugged those thoughts from her mind quickly and decided that the war would simply have to be over soon so they would not have to lead that particular life.
On day number ten inside the safety zone, Cassandra and Carlos headed to the meeting place and waited for Lewis.
The safety zone had very few luxuries, if any at all.
One of the few things still working in their favor was limited electricity powering lights. Inside buildings many other luxuries like refrigerators and microwaves were still being used, draining the sketchy power daily.
Many of the apartments buildings had been cut off from the power grid by vandals or military, Cassandra had heard both, and really did not know, and fights for a warm meal in one of the few buildings that still had working power were common.
Suddenly, the power went out.
It was nearly evening, and a sudden darkness washed over the myriads of people in the district.
An uproar cried out, and Cassandra and Carlos could hear people screaming and yelling from several blocks away, in the direction of the entry sites.
Great hordes of people already inside the zone mobbed towards the sounds of the shouting and yelling, while others that were lucky enough to have been able to nestle inside the many buildings, stuck their heads out of the windows and watched down the streets.
Carlos and Cassandra were tempted to go off and see what the commotion was all about, but they stuck to their plan and waited for Lewis. Nearly half hour later, Lewis showed up, red in the face and nearly out of breath.
His eyes were wide and he hurried over to them.
"Sorry," he said shakily.
"Lewis, what's happened?" Cassandra asked.
"Things are going south, I think. In… in a big way." He responded.
"Why? What's going on?" Carlos questioned.
"They've ... they've closed it off." Lewis said slowly.
"What? Closed what off?"
"All the entry gates. The safety zone is being locked down." Lewis confirmed.
Cassandra eyed the panic at the gates.
"How can they do that? What about all the people on the outside?"
Lewis shook his head. "I don't know. There's a huge fight... Listen, I've got to go back, I just wanted to make sure you're okay."
He gently placed his palm on Cassandra's worried face.
"But..." Cassandra started. "Lewis where are they going to go?"
"Listen, it's going to be alright, okay. Just stay around. Stay out of the mob. I'm sorry I've got to go."
He turned his back on them and headed off towards the gates once more. Gunfire rang out as Lewis disappeared around the corner of a building down the opposite street and Carlos and Cassandra stood there staring, too much in shock to even move.
They simply watched as hundreds and hundreds of people began to swarm into the safety zone, pushing and fighting and cutting into the fence as more gunfire rang out.
Soldiers ran back and forth up and down the streets trying futilely to keep control of the situation. Beyond the gates, where Cassandra and Carlos could not see, Lewis and a large unit of soldiers following their orders forced the onslaught of outsiders away from the entry gates.
It took two days for the raucous to settle down at the gates. Desperate people unwilling to be sent away fought for their right to enter, but were forced away by an unbudging line of soldiers and mobilized tanks.
Cassandra and Carlos stayed near the meeting place and waited. They missed several meal times and simply huddled together and slept on the street corner, waiting for Lewis to find them one more time to update them.
When he finally appeared, his face was long and low. He looked filled with guilt for what he had done, frustrated that he had no choice. Cassandra cast him a wary glance as he walked up the street towards them.
"Lewis?" She greeted him.
He kept his eyes low and barely said anything to either of them.
"What is it?" Cassandra questioned. "Tell us, please, what's going on?"
He shook his head. "I've heard..."
Carlos walked next to Lewis and placed a hand on his shoulder. He could feel Lewis shaking and helped him to sit down on the street curb. He swallowed and tried to find his words once again. Cassandra lowered herself to him.
"I heard today... that...that..." he took a deep sigh. "The bugs... they've gotten into two safety zones."
Cassandra and Carlos exchanged quick glances and she dropped her eyes to the ground.
"Where?" she asked.
"One was in California, and the other was in Missouri."
"The same will happen here." Carlos said after a moment of consideration.
Lewis nodded. "They're out numbering us big time out there."
He looked around the streets at all the people and whispered in a lost tone. "I don't know how much longer any of this is going to last."
"But...what about dropping those nukes?" Cassandra whispered.
"There's so many of them, they can breed in just about anything. So one nuke would take out one hive, but there's God only knows how many more hives to replace that one with.
They've been bombing certain areas, but there's just too many of them and not enough resources to fight them with. There's too many of them, and not enough people."
"It's like... these things.. . they just multiply so quickly and they kill everything." Lewis started.
"And each time one is born, it means one more person has died." Carlos continued.
"We're not safe here. When those things come, we'll all be killed. If not by them, then by the panic that's going to arise." Lewis confirmed.
"All those people that were trying to get in here, we've sent them off to their deaths...and everyone knew it." Lewis said guiltily. "They knew those people would die out there. They know the people in here will die, too."
They fell quiet for a long while and thought about what to do next. They considered leaving the safety zone right away, just the three of them, sneaking out, but Lewis had a duty to perform, and he knew they would be caught and shot.
None of the three could think of where to go. The bugs were undoubtedly heading towards the safety zone. With fall coming on strong, the weather turning wet and cold, the dangers of the inevitable approaching hordes of bugs was not the only threat to survival anymore.
It seemed they truly had no option but to stay where they were doing what they were currently doing, and hope for the best. They stuck to their regular plan.
If anything were to happen, they would meet in their spot and figure it out from there. So, Cassandra and Carlos parted ways once again with Lewis, who had to return to his duties. He pulled himself off the street side and slumped away sadly.
Cassandra and Carlos wove through the streets towards the forming dinner lines and waited quietly for nearly two hours before they were able to get a meal.
As the next two days passed, the cool winds of the city of Chicago picked up and blew through the streets. It rained on and off and just finding a spare blanket or an extra jacket was proving to be almost impossible.
Carlos sat on a curb and stared at a draining puddle on the street as the rain poured down onto the two of them.
"It's all over, Cassandra," he said despairingly.
"Are we just waiting here to die?" She crouched next to him. "Is that it? I don't want to die, Carlos. There has to be another way."
"Everything we know is gone. It's all been taken away."
"Carlos, you..." Cassandra started, but could not decide what to say, so she fell quiet again and watched Carlos slump over the street side miserably watching water disappear down the drain.
"You were right. This isn't how it's supposed to be." He continued on. "Everything is gone, and soon, we will be too. And for what? Nothing."
Cassandra pondered his words for a long while as he continued to rattle on about things he told her she would never understand, about losing everything that had taken a lifetime to achieve.
She truly felt she was sitting there at a loss, simply waiting to die. She looked around at other, soaking wet miserable people and imagined that they all very much felt the same. They waited in cold, wet darkness with almost no food, slowly going mad, waiting to die.
"Listen," she finally said as the rain poured down on her head.
"I've lost things too. I had plans. I had big plans. I didn't even get to live them out, but that doesn't mean it's okay to give up. I don't want to sit here and wait to die. This will end. I can't believe this all happened for just nothing, and all we're supposed to do it just sit here and rot. Is that what you're going to do? Let me know so I can leave you to it then. I want to live."
He stared up at her miserably.
"No, you're right... really you are."
She smirked and crouched down to him once more.
"Look, I understand. I mean, when I graduated from high school, if you had told me then that this is where I'd be today instead of in college, I would never had believed you. But this is where we are. I'm scared to death about everything that's happened and what these creatures are doing to our world, and how were going to pull through, but I tell you what I'm even more scared about..."
She silenced herself for a moment and Carlos looked at her.
"Dying. I don't want to die." She smiled softly. "I'd rather live through this shit than die. It's not much of a choice, but it's the only one I can make right now. There's got to be a reason for all this, some good has to come out of this. We just need to live that long."
Carlos smiled and cracked a crisp laugh. Cassandra joined him for a moment as tears welled up in her eyes.
"Oh God," she sighed. "I'm soaked. This really sucks. Let's go try to find something to put over our heads, okay."
Carlos agreed and they both stood up. The street light above their heads suddenly flickered back to life for a fraction of a second. A sort of silence swept over the street, and while all heads turned upwards towards the lamps, a crackling sound filled the air over the noise of the pounding rain. The lights flickered again, twice and flicked back off to the renewed moaning of the people.
"What's going on? Is the storm doing this?" Cassandra whispered.
"Oh, it's because of a storm alright," Carlos suspected. "Just not a weather storm."
A great grinding sound echoed through the silent dark streets followed by a harsh thumping sound that vibrated the buildings. Suddenly lights flickered back to life in a few buildings along some of the streets.
"Back up generators." Carlos said quickly. "If they run too long, though, they'll die out too."
"What's too long?" Cassandra wondered.
"A day or two, maybe three."
"Great."
They found shelter for the rest of the night and by morning power had still not returned fully. Three days later, the lights died again, and somewhere in the middle of the night, the darkness was permanently cast. Lewis met with them the following evening on schedule and Cassandra immediately asked him about the lights.
"I thought maybe it was getting better, like we'd have power again."
"No one has power. It's all out." Lewis responded morbidly.
"Here?" Carlos asked eyeing their immediate surroundings.
"Everywhere." Lewis whispered.
There was a pause while Cassandra and Carlos tried to absorb what they were being told. Lewis continued on after a moment, filling in the silence.
"We've lost all communication, all power, with everyone, everywhere."
"Do you think the bugs did this?" Carlos asked.
"I think we did, with the bombings." Lewis suspected aloud.
"So now it's pouring rain, fall is coming, the bugs are pressing on, and we have no power." Cassandra totaled. "Great! Can this get any worse?"
"Don't ask!" Carlos chimed in quickly.
"Well, what do we do now?" Cassandra questioned.
"The same thing as ever, we just do it in the dark." Lewis stated.
"What are we doing exactly, Lewis," Cassandra retorted. "Now we have no idea what's going on out there."
Lewis lowered his head and stayed quiet. His eyes reflected the truth that he did not know what was going on outside in the rest of the world, but suspected that the battle was not going favorably.
Days passed and the cooler weather and sporadic rain kept on. Cassandra and Carlos stayed very much to themselves, for fear of being killed over something they did not even have in the first place.
They stood in the packed streets and watched fight after fight, and stayed as far away from the chaos as possible as people were killed in the streets for their blanket or shoes.
Cassandra watched one man walk past her, a knife sticking out of his side. He was rambling to himself, and she wasn't even sure if he knew he had been stabbed.
He came up onto the sidewalk directly in front of Cassandra and cast her a sharp look as she stared at him.
Perhaps he was just an innocent, frazzled bystander fallen victim, or maybe he was a perpetrator that got a taste of his own medicine, but the look he cast her was a threatening and hollow glare none the less. As he heaved himself past Cassandra, Carlos stepped in front of the man.
"Wait," he whispered gently and put his hands out in front of him.
"Back off man," the stabbed man warned.
"I'm a doctor, let me help you."
"Yeah, help, that's a laugh." He said as he pushed his way past Carlos.
"He wants to help me, can you believe that?!" The man said to someone who wasn't there as he laughed a terrible cackle.
Carlos tried to grab the man to force him to listen, he tried to tell him to wait once again but the man quickly turned on him, screaming at Carlos and before Cassandra could even register what was happening, the man had punched Carlos in the jaw and sent him flying down onto the sidewalk. A group around the two men leapt back, trying not get involved.
"Carlos!" Cassandra called anxiously. She wanted to step forward but was afraid to approach with the stabbed man still hovering over him.
"If that knife goes into your artery, you'll be dead in a few minutes," Carlos gagged over his own blood as he tried to upright himself.
"So be it then," the man growled and limped away.
"Oh God, Carlos! Are you alright?" Cassandra asked as she dipped down onto the sidewalk to help him to his feet.
He nodded as he watched the man limp away, leaving a trail of blood in his path.
"Come on," she said to him and helped Carlos off down the street so they could meet with Lewis.
Lewis could see the growing look of fear on Cassandra's face as the general temperament inside the zone became increasingly more desperate and violent. Carlos carried a tired look of concern on his black and blue face as he rubbed his jaw while Lewis approached.
Lewis looked surprisingly bright and uplifted.
"I've heard a report! Radios are still down, there's still no electricity, but we have Jeeps out there, and runners. I've heard that they haven't spotted a bug in days around here at all."
"That's great! Maybe we'll all get out of here, right?" Cassandra suddenly said with a glimmer of hope.
"Well, I think the next step will be to completely eradicate their hives. But I guess the bombings helped." Lewis told them. "I think there's going to be a lot of places that won't be inhabitable for a long time, but from what I've heard, it seems like we're winning finally."
The three sat together for a long while enjoying a moment of victory before the subject turned to life inside the zone without power again.
By the end of that evening with Lewis, Cassandra was feeling a small dose of optimism that she hadn't known in too many days to count. His reassurance that the war was turning into a victory for mankind helped her renew the hope that they would all soon be released.
She had forgotten about the darkness in the city for a moment, and as thoughts of returning to life as normal filled her mind, Cassandra almost forgot about her immediate surroundings.
Two days later, Cassandra and Carlos were lucky enough to get inside one of the buildings, and for the first time in weeks, they had spent the night on a real bed.
Though the mattress was dirty, and there were no bed sheets, leaving them to scavenge what they could find for covers, it felt so unusually good to finally sleep on a bed.
It seemed to Cassandra as she woke up the next morning that luck was changing and life was an upward turn finally. After many long months, she was ready to plan her return to home and start cleaning up the mess of her life.
Carlos rolled over and opened his eyes. He smiled at her, feeling very much the same way about life, even if for only a brief moment.
The sun was peeking in through the cracks between the mini blinds that covered the window. It looked like a bright and beautiful fall morning.
"How you doing?" Carlos asked of Cassandra.
"Fine, you?" She said smiling.
"That felt good," he said stretching.
There was no such thing as privacy in such a crammed place. So, the apartment on the eighth floor of the building was bustling with people. Cassandra and Carlos were simply lucky to be able to get to the bed before anyone else.
One man was sleeping in a big black leather chair on the other side of the room. His head was tipped and a little stream of saliva dribbled down his chin onto his coat as he snored loudly.
Down the short hallway and into the kitchen even more people mingled about chatting to one another.
There was some clanging and banging going on in the kitchen as though someone was rummaging through the cabinets looking for food. However, any last scraps of edible food in the apartment had certainly been long gone.
Cassandra could hear the voice of a man howling, though. He sounded very angry and she heard the distinct sound a wooden cabinet door getting slammed so hard it shattered the glass front.
"What's going on out there?" Carlos questioned groggily.
"I don't know." Cassandra responded. "Don't go out there."
A heavy thumping started down the hallway and Cassandra got the distinct impression that everyone else in the apartment had vacated suddenly. A man appeared in the doorway of the bedroom.
He evaluated the room for a moment then shouted so loudly Cassandra and Carlos both jumped and the sleeping man in the corner shot up like a rocket.
"This is my place! Get out! It's mine! Leave!" The man yelled at the top of his raspy lungs.
He was big man, with many cuts and bruises all over his face. His shirt was ripped in several places, his pants looked brand new, and he was barefoot.
He raised his hands up. One hand was shaking a fist at the three shocked people in the room. The other was yielding a very large knife.
The man howled again and darted forward, directly towards Cassandra. Carlos jumped off the bed and collided into the big man, sending him slightly off balance.
Cassandra and the other man quickly dove over the bed towards the door. Not wanting get involved, the third man ran out of the room and Cassandra could hear the apartment door slam open as he let himself out. Carlos was trying to free himself from the man with the knife.
He gritted his teeth and groaned as he kneed the man in the abdomen as hard as he could. The man howled as though excited to be playing such a fun game. He rolled off of Carlos slightly, then swerved back at him with the knife pointed down.
"Stop!" Cassandra yelled suddenly.
Both men looked to her. Her hands were shaking in front of her wide eyes and her chest raised and fell excitedly, but the gun pointing at the two men caused them both to stop. The big man pulled himself to his feet and smiled a partially toothless grin at her. Carlos heaved himself up slowly.
"Back off now, leave him alone," she said shakily to the man. "I don't want to hurt you. Please, just stop!"
Carlos pulled himself together and stood up. He warily began to walk to Cassandra with a tight grimace on his face.
"That's a big gun for such a little girl now, you'd better watch where you're pointing it," the big man taunted her, laughing. He seemed like he did not really perceive any danger, he acted like he was playing a game.
He took a step forward and Carlos stopped as Cassandra yelled at the man to stop once more. Carlos cast him a dirty look and the man smiled half crazed back at him. He quickly lurched forward with the knife glistening in the sunlight through the blinds. His arms wide, the man taunted them both.
"Boo!"
Carlos jumped and Cassandra flinched uncontrollably. A massive bang rang out in the room, nearly deafening her and sending her toppling backwards.
Carlos and the big man both dropped to the ground and for a moment, no one moved. Cassandra saw Carlos drop, and she cried hysterically, covering her eyes with shaking hands. She could hear people screaming in the building through the walls and even out onto the street.
Carlos pulled himself upright.
"I'm alright! I'm alright!"
Over the heavy beating of his heart, he quickly patted his own body down to be sure that he was not injured.
After a quick check that could still move all his appendages and his clothes were dry, he glanced to Cassandra who was sobbing on the ground, but seemed fine otherwise.
He gritted his jaw and turned to the big man with the knife, who was laying still. There was a trail of blood just over the man's left ear.
At quick glance, it looked as though the bullet had grazed the man's skull, barely hitting him. Carlos quickly pulled himself up and headed towards Cassandra.
She was still clinging to the gun, shaking violently. Carlos noticed as he passed over the downed man, that the bullet had gone through the middle of his forehead.
"Let's go, come on." Carlos said, pulling Cassandra away.
They ran down the hallway and headed onto the stairwell. He dropped to the ground at the top of the stairs and laid Cassandra back. She was beginning to pull herself together.
"Oh God," she sobbed over and over.
"Hey, Cassy, stay with me there girl, come on." Carlos requested of her.
"I don't feel so well." Cassandra sobbed, unable to pull herself to her feet.
"Just breathe."
After a long while, Cassandra started to slow her breathing and stop shaking so much.
"Your aim is improving," Carlos said softly. "Thank you for doing that. Twice now, I think, right?"
Cassandra smiled and huffed. "I can't believe this. I'm going to go jail."
"I doubt that, Cassy. I doubt that very much." Carlos reassured.
She supposed not.
They stood and headed into the corridor of the top floor of the building and found a quiet place to sit and wait until their meeting time with Lewis rolled around.
Nightfall came and passed slowly. The sky was cloudy, there was hardly a star to be seen, and lightening flickered across the thick clouds, but it did not rain or thunder. The darkness inside the safe zone made the night sky seem even darker than normal.
The next morning brought cooler temperatures. Cassandra and Carlos wandered the streets, trying to find any more layers of clothing they could wrap themselves in to keep warm.
That afternoon they met with Lewis again, and immediately noticed a solemn look on his face.
"What's wrong?" Cassandra asked worriedly, she was certain he was going to bring positive news today.
"I've been…. Uh… I've been ordered to mobile infantry. I have to head out in the morning, to… uh…" his voice was shaky and uncertain. "They are mobilizing us."
"What? You're getting sent away? To where?" Cassandra questioned promptly.
"I don't know. I guess to kill the bugs. I've only heard sketchy rumors. I think there's a hive or something nearby or something. I'm not really sure." He clutched his weapon tightly.
"I don't want you to go. You can't leave," Cassandra whispered.
Lewis smiled at her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
"I have to. If we don't kill these things now that we have a chance, we'll never even be able to claim our own planet back again. I guess there's supposed to be some kind of massive mobilization. It's not going to be just me and a couple guys. They're mobilizing everything they've got and getting ready to deploy in a massive sweep. We're going to kill every single one of them."
Lewis said the last three words clearly, harshly, and slowly with confidence, but Cassandra did not share in that confidence.
"We've been issued these new weapons. They call them the M-41A. They're powerful. Just what we need to kill these bastards."
"You gonna teach me how to use that, too?" She then questioned lightly.
Lewis and Carlos both chuckled.
"I think we'll leave that one for the pros, Cassy," Carlos jumped in.
She smiled, feeling halfway embarrassed that her aim was as poor as it was.
"Just hold out in here a little bit longer, okay Cassandra. When this is over, then..." His words drifted off. He gave her a longing look, but then started on his goodbyes. He kissed her gently on the cheek as they hugged
Just before nightfall, they were able to push their way into one of the buildings, but it was so packed full with people in every room that Carlos and Cassandra searched for over half an hour for a place to rest until they finally decided that it would not be possible.
"I guess it's the roof tonight," Cassandra said.
They rested quietly on the roof, and in the middle of the night, were stirred by a tremendous rolling noise.
"What is that sound?" Cassandra whispered.
"Those are tanks," Carlos said with certainty.
Dozens of people lined the rooftop, all eyes cast off in the dark distance as a small sea of spot lights began to appear.
Many soldiers were piled into the long streets in front of the safe zone, and though Cassandra's limited view was blocked by other people, she could see the halogen bulbs lighting up what looked like a small portion of a massive army.
Cassandra counted twelve tanks just in her little viewing space through the buildings across the streets.
Excited people whispered amongst themselves. Some believed that the final battle was about to occur to determine who claim the Earth.
Others suspected that humanity was on the losing side and this was all a last ditched effort to help keep alive what they could of the human race. The whispering discussions continued on for the next hour.
Cassandra wearily tried to continue to watch the line up, but began to doze off. Carlos sat next her, allowing her to prop her head on his shoulder while he continued to scan the darkness.
"What the hell is that?" Someone in the crowd said abruptly.
"What?" Another questioned.
"There, see?" The first pointed far beyond the military line up.
Cassandra opened her eyes as Carlos jostled her to wake her up. She turned her eyes on Carlos for a moment and noticed that he was staring at the pointing man, eyeing his finger and following the path with his eyes.
Cassandra did the same and squinted hard trying to let her eyes adjust to the complete darkness beyond the city limits, all along the highways and smaller access roads.
"There's movement, lots of movement." Someone whispered.
"Are those more tanks?" Cassandra said as her fuzzy vision focused on a massive force heading towards the city.
"No." Someone next to her responded with great fear. "Those are moving too fast to be tanks."
From the rooftop the people fell quiet. Cassandra glanced across to the other rooftops and noticed that everyone was on their feet, leaning forward trying to get a clearer view to define what they were seeing.
Suddenly a siren rang out from the military line up and the barking howls of a commander echoed through the streets between the loud blaring.
The halogen lights turned onto the streets and the massive whir rose up from the line of tanks as the vehicles were powered on.
Cassandra glanced down at the military effort and saw frantic soldiers running into their positions, taking to their tanks, their jeeps, manning their weapons. People on the rooftops and within the buildings began to scream and a massive cloak of fear covered the hold out.
"Jesus Christ!" someone on the rooftop said dramatically as she backed off and darted down the stairs.
Cassandra squinted once more into the darkness and focused on the movement. It took her a moment to register what she was seeing, and longer to comprehend it.
"Carlos," she said shakily. "We're dreaming right?"
"I wish we were."
Gunfire soon rang out as the black sea of dragons reached the perimeter of the city. Thousands of the massive beasts swarmed ever so quickly through the highways, under the passages, down side streets, and directly and fearlessly into the line of fire.
They scaled buildings as the swarm approached and leapt over some of the tanks. They showed no concern when one or ten of their brothers were shot down.
Their sheer numbers offered certainty that the creatures would get through the line. The streets began to smoke with weapon fire and acidic residue as pavement melted from under the army, and building weakened by both cannon fire and acid blood, collapsed.
Soldiers fired non-stop at the creatures and they lashed out with their tails, claws, teeth and extra jaws, slashing through the men's body protection as though it was newspaper.
The incredible panic that stirred inside the safety zone was tumultuous. Too frightened to move, Cassandra merely watched from the rooftop as hundreds, thousands of the terrible deadly creatures poured into the crowds of scared, defenseless people, killing or incapacitating them with ease.
The screams from the panic in the district echoed through emptiness of the abandoned city, even louder than the weapon fire and shrieking hisses of the monsters that poured over the city like locusts.
Many on the rooftops bolted to the fire escapes and the stairs, clambering down to their loved ones or their own freedom without any consideration for the person next to them.
Only a handful stayed silently crouched to the roof next to Cassandra and Carlos. Gunfire from within the safety zone began to fill the air.
The high pitched shrieks of thousands of terrified people filled the air accompanied by massive gunfire and blasts from the tank cannons every second.
Cassandra watched one of the terrible creatures scale a building across the street and push itself through the first open window it found, relentlessly seeking out its prey. People ran screaming out the building as yet more of the creatures flooded inside.
Glancing down onto the street, she could see the stampeding people, running away from the onslaught, trample down those too slow to move out of the way. She shut her eyes and shook.
Carlos clasped his hand onto her shoulder. She could feel him shaking as well. They both looked beyond the military barricade and saw a non-stop sea of the mighty black serpents rushing towards the city. Several of the tanks had already stopped firing.
Falling into the trap of shooting the creatures in too close of a range, the monsters acidic blood poured down onto the troops trying to stop them. The acid burned through the tanks, through the troops, and melted the blacktop of the streets.
There was suddenly a massive crunching sound and a vibration that shook the building Cassandra cowered on. She looked to the street where the tanks were lined up and saw one falling into a rift in the ground.
The acid blood of so many creatures that had been killed had burned through the pavement layers and caused a fault in the ground and one tank slid sideways into the hole.
The men inside tried to crawl out, but were quickly stopped by the swarm of creatures that ran over the tank as easily as one would step over a tiny stone.
The military effort put forth to stop the creatures was massive, but so were the numbers of the animal creatures. The battle almost seemed preplanned.
It was as though while the humans were planning a massive movement, figuring that the creatures were being depleted in numbers from their bombing efforts, the creatures themselves had planned a strategic fall back.
They knew exactly where the humans were hiding, and they swarmed together in enough numbers to properly invade and kill.
Cassandra wondered for a moment if they were truly intelligent enough to plan such an attack. Had the creatures truly cut the power, limiting the vision of their prey, and adding to the panic?
It seemed impossible to imagine a four legged creature so intelligent, but yet she could hardly refute the idea as she stared from the rooftop down upon a massive onslaught of uncountable numbers of hellish monsters.
The creatures simply kept coming. They split off once inside the city borders and invaded the buildings as though systematically eliminating their prey.
When Cassandra looked down to the street once again, she realized the creatures were not alone. Their egg-hatchling, face-hugging younger siblings had joined the onslaught.
Hundreds of people were laying in the street unconscious, with the sickly spidery creatures strapped firmly to their heads.
Feeling nauseous, Cassandra backed away.
"Carlos," she stared weakly. "We have to go! We have to find Lewis, we have to leave!"
Carlos stared off the edge of the building and pondered their best course of action. They were trapped, no question about it.
He glanced over the side and saw three of the giant black creatures gliding easily up the side of the building. They disappeared into the building through the windows.
Carlos could hear the sound of glass shattering and people inside screaming in a panic.
"They're in the building." Carlos whispered.
"What?" Cassandra said, shaking from head to toe. "Oh God," she sobbed.
"Okay," Carlos started. He breathed deeply.
"Shit, what do we do?" He whispered to himself softly.
Cassandra turned to face the door to the stair case. She was certain she could hear a thundering sound of feet rising up to the door, but she didn't know if they were human or not.
Suddenly the door burst open and a frightened swarm of people came rolling through. Cassandra shrieked, startled by the sudden movement, but she quickly quieted herself and turned back to Carlos.
"We have to get off the roof! We can't go anywhere!" He exclaimed to her and the group of people that had just joined them.
Out of breath, one man from the group panted to Carlos. "Those things are in the building!"
"I know, I know." Carlos said quickly.
He stared at the wide open doorway. It was their only way off the rooftop.
The other buildings were too far to jump to, and to try to scale down the fire escape would take too long. They were cut off.
Beyond the door was a stair well that led to the ground, but the stairwell was most likely infested with the hellish creatures.
The ground was nowhere near safer than the rooftop either, for a myriad of face hugging parasites crawled the streets, readily waiting to jump on anyone that crossed their paths.
Carlos turned once more to the highways and the military border. The defensive line that he could see was badly broken and the pressing swarm of creatures now rolled easily into the city, attacking freely the frightened citizens.
"Cassandra," Carlos said firmly, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. "We need to get downstairs, get out of here right now."
She shook her head slowly, crying wildly, but an unwavering look on Carlos's face made her focus on the task at hand. She took several deep breaths and pulled the gun out in front of her, clenching it tightly.
With one last deep breath, she stepped forward with Carlos in the lead, through the doorway and on to the stair well. People behind her began to follow their lead, and they all descended the stairs as quickly as they could.
The shrieking of the beasts echoed through the corridors, accompanied by many terrified shrieks and very little gunfire. One small pistol rang out into the air.
Cassandra slid down three floors behind Carlos. They looked through the window of the door that led to the fourth floor of the building and saw one of the horrible black monsters turn its wicked head towards them from some distance down the hallway.
The thing spun around and shot after them like a cheetah. The group shot down the stairs as fast as they could. The creature hit the door so hard it depressed the lever to open it and the door swung open with such a force it nearly came off the hinge.
The creature lost its footing from the impact and toppled over the railing. It fell to the next level before it was able to catch itself and scale down the banister after the group of fleeing people. They shrieked and sped up, pushing into one another, desperate to reach the bottom level.
The creature was on top of the group in no time. One man at the back of the group gagged horribly as the thing's tail ripped through his chest and he was picked up and flung off as the creature leapt towards the next hysterical person.
"Shoot it!" Someone screamed at Cassandra at the top of his lungs.
Cassandra stopped in her tracks, wide eyed, staring at the horrible monster that had just killed two then three of the group on the level below.
Before she knew what was happening someone had jumped onto her, grabbing at the gun she held, trying to pry it out of her hands. She was frozen in fear and could not release her fingers from the gun.
People were screaming; it was all happening so fast. Carlos jumped into action and wrestled with the person that was grabbing Cassandra's hands.
"Shoot the damn thing!" The man howled.
"Cassy!" Carlos yelled.
She whipped around. Halted and defenseless, trapped on a stairwell between certain death above, and below, the group was easy prey for the creature.
Suddenly twenty became ten and the thing was practically on top of Cassandra. She raised the gun and barely aimed. Squeezing her eyes shut, she prepared for the weapon's back thrust and braced her feet widely. She pulled the trigger.
The bullet punched a fist sized hole into the cheap sheet rock wall that lined the stairwell and the creature, oblivious to the attempt made at stopping it, charged forth. Its tail whipped around and collided with one person, sending him crashing backwards into Carlos, Cassandra, and several others.
They all fell down the stairs. Frightened, Cassandra quickly fumbled the weapon around to the direction of the raging monster once more.
She did not hesitate in pulling the trigger. A little spray of acid splashed up from where the bullet grazed the long, sloped head of the terrible monster.
It shot out its inner set of jaws in defiance and shrieked. Cassandra pulled the trigger for the third time, and the bullet followed a course directly into the animal's inner mouth.
The thing released a high pitched whine and dropped to ground before it destroyed its next victim. Covered in blood and crying hysterically the woman that had been in the thing's grasp fell to the ground and dragged herself free.
Another satanic screeching filled the air as the people remaining in the group darted down the rest of the stairs.
They slammed into more hysterical people that poured into the stairwell from the second floor.
Cassandra glanced back up and saw more people running down the stairs from the level above. The creature's acid blood was burning a hole through every set of stairs from the fourth floor down, and people hopped over the thing's body and wove around the acidic dripping.
As some of the group in front of Cassandra pushed the door open to the street, they instantly fell backward into the group behind them, screaming from under the sickly mask of the face huggers, clawing at their faces desperately trying to get the things off their heads.
After a few seconds the people fell still and were quickly hopped over by the rest of the escaping crowds. Carlos pulled Cassandra to the left and they darted down the street as fast as they could.
"Where are we going? This way!" Cassandra yelled as she started across the street in the opposite direction of Carlos.
"No! We have to go!" Carlos yelled.
"Lewis! We can't leave without Lewis!" Cassandra cried and bolted towards the meeting spot as fast as she could.
She ignored the creatures scaling the buildings to her left and right. She kept her gun ready to fire, but she closed her eyes and barreled past the flood of people swarming in to her, desperate to get away from the creatures.
"Cassandra!" Carlos yelled from behind.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Carlos bolting to catch up with her.
"Come on!" She yelled, not slowing her gait.
She wove around a corner two blocks away and bolted over fallen bodies with the face huggers attached to them until she could see the lamp post where they would meet Lewis.
He was not there.
She slowed down and eyed the streets around her.
Carlos caught up to her, panting for air. The wave of creatures had seemed to drift past them. She saw several on a building down the block, but the sounds of their shrieks were fading in the other direction.
The screams of panicked people filtered off to the opposite side of the safety zone as they bolted towards the rest of the city, desperate to hide and find safety as the creatures pursued them deeper into the district.
The smell of gunpowder and acid filled the air and burned Cassandra's nostrils and eyes. She walked two more blocks to one of the entrances to the safety zone and stared in amazement at the wreckage that had been left behind.
Burned out jeeps, thousands of serpent corpses, and hundreds of solider bodies lined the streets, covered by a myriad of weapon shells. Smoke still smoldered from some of the weapons and from the patchy areas where grenades had been launched.
"Oh God. Lewis!" Cassandra whispered.
Carlos placed his palm on her shoulder.
"Cassy, he probably didn't make it. We need to leave," he said with certainty.
She shot him a disbelieving glance and turned back towards the meeting spot.
He eyed the buildings all around them warily, but it did seem as though the massive wave of creatures had passed through the area and were now busy chasing the people through the city streets. Cassandra trudged around the corner and glanced up.
Lewis was standing under the street lamp, dual pulse rifles in his hands.
His face was bloody and his clothes were black from gunpowder, but he turned to her and smiled and darted to her.
He wrapped his arms around her, clattering the two guns together behind her back. She threw her arms around his neck and held just as tightly to him as she did the gun she still clenched in her fingers.
"Lewis!" Carlos whispered in shock.
He pulled himself from Cassandra and looked at the two of them and sighed deeply. Another terrible shriek rang out through the night air and was soon echoed back to by dozens more of the black creatures.
The three glanced to the buildings around them and stared quietly. Lewis cast his eyes onto a bit of movement he saw in the street behind Cassandra and pushed her off to this side quickly, pointed one gun and pulled the trigger.
The eight legged face hugger that was crawling quickly towards them was splayed into a million pieces across the street, its acid blood hissed as it melted through the ground.
"We need to go, now. This way. Come on." Lewis said.
He directed them to the military line of vehicles and they jumped into one humvee that had limited acid burns and claw marks through its body. Lewis started the vehicle up and drove away quickly, weaving through the corpses, driving over sidewalks and through grassy yards to avoid the acid burned roadways.
"They planned this, didn't they?" Cassandra whispered suddenly.
"Sure as hell seems so." Lewis said grittily.
"What are we going to do with hardly any weapons?"
"Oh, we've got weapons," Carlos said from the back seat as he stared into the vehicle's trunk space.
There were four large crates full of M-41-A pulse rifles in the back of the vehicle. Lewis drove on quietly and scanned the highways for any signs of life. Cassandra leaned back into the seat of the truck and sighed deeply. They were on the run again. She began to wonder if perhaps they would fare better staying in a small group and fending for themselves.