The Terror From Beyond the Void

WE FELT THE PRESSURE again; the buzzing, the headaches—we had come close to another side of the invisible barrier that kept us trapped like animals in a zoo.

We stopped our retreat; the barrier was our daunting reminder that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. All we could do was elude the threat. For how long we were capable of doing that, though, was a question that I didn’t want to face the answer to.

We took cover several yards away from where the pressure began its hold. In a close grouping of trees, we sat with our backs against their thick bases. We mourned for Wes and Macie, son and wife, brother and mom.

“I don’t understand,” Kevin whispered. “I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

As a father, I wanted to answer Kevin’s question badly. I wanted to comfort him and explain everything that was going on. I wanted to give him a logical reason why his mother and brother had fallen victim to the otherworldly predator. I wanted to tell him that it was all a dream and that everything was going to be ok in the end.

But I couldn’t tell him any of that.

I didn’t know what was going on either. I didn’t know why my wife and son had to die. Why the Saunders’ had to die. I had been wishing all day that what we were experiencing was a dream, but now I was forced to face the fact that it certainly wasn’t, and in the end, nothing was going to be ok.

I started thinking about the creature, about what it looked like and what it was doing. It had crashed onto our planet, taken a form reminiscent of the elements that surrounded it, turned us into an edible sustenance, and fed on us. All while keeping us confined to, in a wide scope, a small, manageable area.

What if this was happening in more places than just Timber Acres? What if it was more widespread? Was it the entire region? The entire state? North America? The world …?

With our electronics down, we had no idea what was happening on the outside. I wondered about the man in the other cabin, and how he was faring through all of this. Was he alone? Did he have a family with him? What was his story?

And if this was a widespread event, did these creatures look the same everywhere? Or did they use whatever natural elements that surrounded them upon landing as their guise?

The endless parade of questions were giving me an all new kind of headache, but at least it waved the mournful thoughts for a short time. I couldn’t be certain Kevin had that luxury though. Sitting across from me, he looked sad and confused. No longer was the hopeful, “take charge” Kevin present; a somber, defeated Kevin had taken his place. And even though I was feeling the same way, I couldn’t let our last moments feel like that to him. I needed to be the hope that he had lost.

I stood to my feet, the hatchet firmly in my grip. Kevin looked up, his eyes lit with worry that something was happening.

“Let’s talk this out. Why would an enemy army use an EMP?” I asked him, already knowing the answer.

“What?”

“Like in your game, Call of Duty. Why would you use an EMP?”

Kevin thought for a minute, and I was thankful his mind was finally off in a new direction. “To block the enemy’s ability to use technology so they can’t see an attack coming.”

“Exactly. This thing, this terror, from elsewhere, severed our ability to see the attack coming. We can’t communicate, we can’t find out how big this thing is. We’re either a test, or part of a larger invasion.”

“Or just a mass genocide,” Kevin said. I cocked my head and scrunched my brow. He continued:

“That thing has shown no sign of wanting to communicate with us. It simply turns people into something it can eat. There’s no reason, no remorse—its pure animalistic instinct. What if we, as a planet, are just another stop on this thing—or its species’—line of travel?”

Kevin’s hope was gone. Even though I understood his doom and gloom, I was hoping he would have joined me in steering away from it. If there was any chance of our survival, it wasn’t going to stem from surrendering to the threat. We needed to think; there had to be more. There had to be something we weren’t considering.

Then, a thought:

“The energy,” I began, “from all of our technology. That ‘EMP’ didn’t necessarily wipe it all out. It simply rerouted it. It’s still here,” I said, thinking about the pressure, headaches and the ear-splitting static buzz.

Kevin finally perked up, a glimmer of hope sparkling in his, now very active, eyes. “It pushed all of the electromagnetic energy out of the way,” he said. “Because that was a threat to it.”

“We can use the energy against it. Maybe even kill it,” I said with another smirk.

Kevin shot to his feet and looked around.

“All of the attacks have been a good distance from the edges of our grid,” he said. “It won’t come near the energy. We need to lure it here. That’s our chance at killing it.”