Grant

  Exhaustion is a funny thing. I remembered soccer coaches and drill sergeants telling me that whenever you think your body is done, that you’ve given all you got, you’re really only about halfway there. The human body is capable of incredible feats of endurance. And violence. And most important of all, trickery.

  The key to it all, however, was to put those together.

  Even though the swarms of mutant animals and chimeric insects had abated, I wasn’t going to take any chances. After mentally shooting my wife my plan and deliberately closing our mental connection so I didn’t have to listen to how stupid it was, I relayed it along with a set of instructions to Elvis before retreating to my backyard.

  Using the last of my Terrestria absolutely felt like my soul was enthusiastically licking a plateful of broken glass but I needed just a bit more Earth Magic. I shaped a thin layer of rock into a dome with handles on the inside. I quickly poked a thin visor about eye level and climbed inside.

  “Fucking genius.” I smirked, gripping the handles and easily lifting the dome.

  My wife’s voice crept through the slits of our telepathic connection. [You mean absolutely stupid on a level that only a brain-damaged moron could achieve.]

  I promptly slammed that door in my mind closed again and locked it. “Stay out of my goddamn brain, woman.” Muttering at the air wouldn’t do me any good so I put the last piece of my plan into action. Carefully, I shucked my boots and let my feet dig into the earth. Releasing the breath I’d unknowingly held, I felt trickles of energy seep into me. I didn’t have to use that to power my Earth Magic, but maybe I could use it to keep my strength up. Carrying all this armor and weaponry and stone dome up the hill and down the road would be a serious challenge for anyone.

  Even me.

  “Time to Metal Gear Solid this bitch.” I growled, taking it one step at a time. I walked until I could see Elvis hacking through a two-headed bulldog. Viscera splattered everywhere as he did his best to chop through the spine the hard way. My earth dome kept the blood off of me.

  “Elvis!”

  Mike whipped around from ripping the head off of an ant-spider. “Boss?! That you?”

  “Yup.” I said, shrugging my shoulders and sticking my fingers out the visor slit. “Just uh, tell Paul to find me near the main bridge. I gotta get my brother. You two seem to have this well enough in hand.”

  I didn’t wait for agreement or disagreement, I just turned, picked up my thin shell of rock and hustled north. I couldn’t exactly run, but I moved faster than I expected. The dirt beneath me fed me drips of energy, enough to stave off pure exhaustion and the residual magic in my feet picked up dirt to the point that I basically had boots of compact dirt covering my feet.

  “Well, whaddya’ know?” I chuckled, adjusting my gait until I was doing some kind of forward slide so that my feet never really left the ground. I didn’t even have to pull the energy up into my core to use it like this, it just cycled up through the dirt up to my ankles and then back down again. I was almost skating, if skating was some forward slide-step

  Two minutes of deftly sliding and scuttling around like a deranged ladybug on meth, and I finally crossed the canal path on the northwest side of the damn park, opposite the direction of Earl’s church. One part of my mind screamed in silent horror at the carnage and destruction I passed. Everything not melted down by the rains stood like broken skeletons. Just about everything that made up human construction was in some way connected to or held together or protected by synthetic material.

  Car frames rusted on metal tires with the synthetic rubber wheels melted off, windows falling out without the rubber seals to maintain friction and the plastic pulleys and gears to keep them up. A few older cars held up better but their sad state of being drove home the fact that literally everything had changed.

  My inner thoughts derailed as my foot snagged on something sticky. I looked down to see a human leg connected to a chunk of bloody torso bent around my ankle. My gorge rose but I battled heroically to not spew inside my stone dome. Taking short breaths to maintain control, I carefully stepped over the remains of some poor soul and continued on still trying to distract my brain with innocuous thoughts.

  Stranger still, it felt like my brain was juggling three different lines of thoughts, simply out of survival. First, I was concentrating on getting to the Route 1 bridge to hopefully rescue my brother. Second, I was steadfastly ignoring the gross carnage around me. It had definitely lightened up, but pockets of mutant insects and chimeric mammals fought each other all around me at random. Walking past a derelict house didn’t mean anything to me until a porcu-bear with elongated metal spikes for fur tore through a pair of tag-teaming praying mantis’, each the size of the truck.

  Wisely, I kept my mouth shut and scuttled on past them at a quicker pace. But the third thought my brain wouldn’t put down was just examining what our new world looked like. Telephone poles looked alien, blackened with cracks running through them. I know that they’re treated with something to extend their life but modern technology did NOT account for magical rain melting away any evidence of our existence. The insulative sheathing around the wires was completely gone and in most places, the thin wires had long snapped off. I could see wire dangling down from some of them as I traveled further north.

  I knew these streets. I walked them all the time with my wife after dinner. It’s strange to see beautiful houses half demolished with oil-like puddles marring the walls and grass. Some spots had more of those oil puddles than expected; I assumed that’s where the large outdoor trashcans had melted away.

  My trek up the latest hill was cut short by a scream and then a huge crash. I pivoted to see a bug larger than a city bus tear through several half-broken down houses, as if it was committed to finishing the removal of humanity’s stay on this planet. Its legs were thicker than telephone poles and its splintered toes resembled an excavator’s bucket shaped into a wicked triangle. I slowly backed up, thinking bland thoughts imagining that I was zero threat at all.

  That was, until I saw my idiot brother laying on top of that monster's skull. My younger brother was precariously perched on the bug’s head facing its butt desperately holding onto two spears made of some strange white material.Those spears were shoved in between the thick carapace of the bug’s back and the armored portion of its head. Unintentionally, since my brother was bleeding visibly even from where I stood, he was driving that thing as his weight shifted from one spear to the next just trying to hang on for dear life.

  I couldn’t make out what I knew to be some colorful language coming from his mouth due to the bug itself trumpeting its rage and pain all across the decomposing neighborhood. And I didn’t want to doff my stone shell for fear of the beast deciding that I would be a convenient target to vent its rage.

  “Shit.” I cursed. “Where is Paul when you need him?”

  I watched the bug try to dislodge my brother, the driving force behind its pain and also, its driver. It bulldozed through house frames, headbutted trees and telephone poles, bucked like a bronco and even did some weird vibrating trick that exposed underdeveloped wings underneath its back carapace. Still, my brother hung on while cussing a blue streak.

  When things got especially dicey, I saw some kind of energy flare to life around Thomas like a shield, blocking anything from directly touching him. Aside from the fact that his leg was shredded and his side had some chunk of metal sticking out of it, he was doing a damn good job of staying alive.

  So I just stood there. Backing up was pointless. It’s not like this behemoth was coming my way.

  Then it hit me. “Damn it. I’m going to get myself killed.”

  I just slowly watched as my brother accidentally turned the best a bit more to the south-east, like he was driving the damn thing towards my house. The moment that thing got twenty yards past me and I was sure that it wouldn’t randomly turn around, I got out from under the stone shell and sprinted towards its butt.

  Now, super strength isn’t the same thing as super speed, but compared to a normal human, it's damn close. Each step carried me further than I expected. I could feel that I needed to lean forward more than I was comfortable with so that I wouldn’t just hop uselessly twenty feet into the air for no reason. I’m not trying to Hulk-jump around like a spastic cricket. I was trying to move fast and in one direction.

  Before I knew it, I was waaaay too close to the bug’s back legs churning through the earth as if it were soft mud. Grabbing my tomahawk and war-ax off my back, I planted my feet, hurling myself upwards at a slight angle. I arched my back preparing to slam my blades into the shell to get a solid grip but then it turned to the left and accelerated. Its rush tore through the remains of an RV and four houses before it reared up on its back legs and shrieked. An innocent pine tree right in front of it straight up disintegrated into a storm of shavings and chunks.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I gulped in midair, barely managing to land without breaking both ankles. Hunkering down in the churned earth to hide as much as possible. Without my shell, I was now a much more obvious target to the insane wildlife. With my dome, I was some rock. Without my dome, I was food. Or potential food.

  My brother hung limply on top of the beast, only one hand maintaining a grip. His other hand was holding his side trying to stem the flow of blood. I hustled after the monstrous beetle carving a path through apocalyptic suburbia while trying to dislodge its unwanted passenger. It’s like the beast knew when to turn. I attempted two more heroic jumps to land on its back and the irritating monster would either take a sharp turn or just flat out sprint further.

  At this point I was driving it closer to my house. With Elvis and Paul, we stood a chance at saving my brother. Not that I could actually turn the beast. It was a crapshoot of a method. All I knew is that if I tried to hop on its back, it would do something different like turn or pick up speed.

  My telepathic connection with my wife opened wide, her will slamming straight through the door I had shut.

  [ARE YOU INSANE?!]

  Cringing at the incoming headache, I shunted it to the side as I doggedly kept pursuing the beast that had zero clue I was chasing it.

  [Don’t yell at me!] I shot back, tasting a bit of blood in my mouth. [It has Thomas and I’m certainly not succeeding. Which means I need some fucking help!]

  The beetle turned down my street and paused. Ichor dripped down its mandibles as it stared greedily at the pile of insect and mammalian corpses littering the area. Mike and Elvis had done good work protecting the house but right now, this area was catnip to a much larger, much hungrier creature.

  Thomas’ shrieks were finally audible now that his ride had ceased its own horrific noise making.

  “Someone help me! For the love of G-”

  Like a black lightning bolt from the heavens, Paul slammed onto the back of the beetle’s carapace.

  “That’s what I was trying to do.” I muttered, watching Paul hammer down with both fists, stunning the beast. He slid down to my brother, carefully tossed him up onto his shoulder and hopped down. As he ran towards my house, Elvis passed him holding his warhammer with two hands.

  I didn’t wait to see the result. I put away my tomahawk and held my own two handed weapon at the ready, charging forward. It didn’t make a difference. I planted my feet, reared back, and swung with all my might. My war-ax skittered off its leg like a plastic knife stabbing a cast iron skillet.

  “What the-”

  Stepping back, I turned the handle so the hammer side faced forward and swung again. As if mocking me, my weapon just bounced right off of it. I might as well have been smacking a mountain. The beast charged forward, and as it did, its back left leg kicked me. I tumbled back ass over teakettle until a friendly stop sign pole sticking out of a small hill of churned up earth broke my passage.

  My helmet and armor prevented the worst of injuries but my bell was rung. Finally unable to hold back, I turned to the side and puked, my stomach finally having enough of my antics for the day. With a shaky hand, I pushed the sandy dirt some of the sandy dirt that I was almost buried in to cover up the sick. At least I didn’t let go of my weapon. Using the handle as a cane, I unsteadily pulled myself up to shaky feet and watched as Paul and Elvis hammered at the oversized beetle.

  Elvis’ strikes did about as much good as mine did, that is to say absolutely nothing. Paul’s at least got its attention but I didn’t see any injuries on the beast. Step by step, I wobbled forward like a wounded drunk.

  My brain finally registered that my wife had been mentally communicating with me for the last couple moments. I was too woozy to truly comprehend any of it.

  I did what I could, shooting her a quick visualization of a desperate plan and a few simple words. [We need help.]

  [WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?!]

  Her panic was clear. My wife isn’t a fighter. She’s a gardener. She likes to cook and wear pretty dresses and play instruments and paint with a glass of wine in her hand. Violence is not in her nature. Not even when possums were eating our chickens. I was the one to trap and put the poultry eating bastards down.

  [I can’t kill THAT!? How do you expect me to do what y’all can’t?]

  Darkness slammed into me harder than that damn stop sign.

  *********

  Elvis

  “I’m pretty good at hittin’ stuff but I don’t think I’m getting paid enough for this.”

  Each swing of my massive weapon pancaked everything it had ever hit until Bossman decided to send an oversized thing at me. Even Paul was getting smacked around. All we could do was hold the beast where it was.

  Which wasn’t a problem until a side kick from Beetle-zilla sent Grant flying and he did not get up. Even watching almost got me killed. Two forelegs with grasping claws dripping some kind of acid were scary enough without having to worry about that humongous mouth shrieking its bloodlust at me.

  And even that was all fine and dandy until something really scary happened. A sweet, feminine voice reached out and spoke directly INTO MY HEAD.

  [When I say so, hit the ground.]

  It wasn’t that the voice was scary, it’s that it was calm, and pictures came with it. I saw Paul freeze up at the exact same second and I knew that he had been told the same thing.

  I heard a series of sthuuuums so close together and I almost dodged on instinct but I held my ground, pulling off my shield from my back, charging the monster. With a grunt, I hurled my warhammer into its mouth and slammed my shield against its mandibles, raking my shield against its face so it couldn’t spit it out.

  [NOW!]

  Pushing against my massive shield, I hurled myself back and down, covering myself with my shield.

  My world went white.

  *******

  Sandra

  His plan was madness. I mean, it made sense but that didn’t make it any less crazy. I don’t even understand how he fit all that information in a three-second mental conversation. I mean, it’s easy for me floating here above my house surrounded by my protective magically mutant plants, but the love of my life doing it while fighting a head injury?

  I could see him from where I sat. One small comfort is that he was mostly buried by dirt and only part of his armor stuck out so I didn’t have to worry about mutant animals getting to him, mainly because he led some monstrosity to our doorstep and that in and of itself scared everything else off.

  We just had to deal with this and get him to Isabella and the others the moment this thing was dead. I’m not even sure how Grant came up with this idea in the first place though.

  But I did it. Hovering ten feet in front of me were ten ‘Rods of God’. Five were Alchemically enhanced metal footballs that were magically altered to be denser than they had any right to be. The other set of five were basically sharpened railroad spikes also Alchemically enhanced to be far more dangerous.

  I took a slow breath, glancing down at Elvis and Paul fighting it to a standstill. It looked like a normal beetle, no extra parts or anything to make it super dangerous beyond the fact that it was big and durable. I could still hear Grant’s words ringing in my head.

  “Everything dies if you hit it hard enough, and we’re just not doing that. We need our big guns, babe. That’s you. All you gotta do is cut loose. Hurl the metal weapons I made for you up into the air as high as you can. Yes, I know you have short-range telekinesis, but it's still extremely powerful. You’re just going to cheat the system. Send the fat ones up first and the skinny ones after. As they fall and re-enter your range of control, feel them. Don’t rely on your sight, rely on the senses of your powers. Redirect them with all your force at the beetle. Think of it like a mix between batting a baseball after a pitch and a missile slamming into something. Cut loose babe. You’re awesome and I love-”

  That infuriating man. Can’t even hold on long enough to finish telling me how much he loves me. Concentrating deeply, I grabbed the ‘Rods of God’ and telekinetically sent them flying straight up. They disappeared into the clouds and I closed my eyes for just a second. Opening them, I stared at the mutant bug, slavering and shrieking.

  Paul and Elvis jumped back at my command, not a moment too soon. Elvis landed fifteen feet back with his tattered shield covering his back and Paul stood on a mound of rock, burning white light exploding from his palms. I couldn’t spare the mental energy to wonder about that. I felt the projectiles enter my range and my mind streeetched! Each redirection felt a bell ringing, a GONG for every chunk of strength temporarily removed. I almost didn’t catch the last one.

  The beast died so fast it almost deflated. Ten holes appeared in its head and neck so fast that it didn’t even move. The force of the ‘Rods of God’ created a sucking force that yanked out its innards and almost at the same time, those very same projectiles hit the ground underneath it with such force that the rock exploded upwards shredding the beast like tissue.

  Chunks of bug gore, chitin and viscera exploded in a halo as it painted the street and all of its wreckage in green disgustingness. Whatever Paul was blasting into the mix only made it smell worse. Burnt bug guts.

  For a moment, everything was completely silent.

  “Boss!”