Where the monster bird and green, humanoid monsters seemed vaguely like things he’d seen from some of the games his best friend’s little sister always played, the thing Niles was looking at was like an amalgam of half a dozen animals.

  A head like an alligator; body of a hippo; legs like an elephant; tail like a rat; skin like a naked mole rat, only visibly thicker and a bit darker. Its eyes were black disks focused intensely on the lone crabapple tree his grandfather had planted in the backyard days before he was born, and its footsteps buried into the dirt and grass, planting and stabilizing it as it stared down the tree.

  At the moment, it didn’t seem to care about the onlookers — the giant birds lined up on his garage roof, curious about what it was doing or maybe waiting for a chance to nab some of the unripe fruit.

  This was the last exit out of his house, and it had far too many eyes on it.

  Niles cursed under his breath and turned his head towards the side exit. The green creatures were scared off, but were still hovering around the street out front. And with the driveway being fully visible to the road, he’d be spotted in no time.

  There were no clear exits.

  Doing some mental math and remembering the state of the fence between himself and his neighbor, he knew there was only one choice. ‘The front and side have more threats than I have bullets. The back has a big one, but if I’m quiet, it might leave me alone. The birds seem opposed to coming down with it there, too. At worst, they might make some noise, pulling its attention while I run the other way.’

  Making sure he had everything he’d collected quickly, he took a deep breath before opening the door.

  The screen door squeaked a little, alerting the birds to his presence, but thankfully, they just watched him. Meanwhile, the lumbering monstrosity continued its glare against the trunk of craggly bark. Taking careful steps across the deck after helping the door close softly, he reached the handful of steps toward his escape.

  Then, as he had his eye between the pink goliath of a beast and the birds, he saw a large burning chunk of melt barreling down. Its target: two hundred and fifty meters west.

  Niles’ eyes widened, and pupils dilated. He had only a second or two before impact. He gave up stealth for speed and ran for the side of his house along the fence. The hurried stomps of his feet as he jumped off the deck, landed on the concrete, and rolled beside his house made the massive entity aware of him, as it cocked its head towards the corner of the house.

  However, it was too late for it to go after him.

  Off in the distance, the fallen satellite made contact. Breaking concrete and igniting the gasoline held in the underground reservoir beneath the gas station. The earth shook from the impact, and a massive fireball erupted, scaring off the birds and distracting everything else.

  But that was far from the end, as there was a second explosion, and more soon after.

  The propane tanks.

  As a result of the intense heat from the gasoline burning, the nearest tank was compromised, expanded, and blew. The pressurized, flammable liquid scattered along with the shrapnel, making more heat, damaging more tanks, and causing the fireball to grow many times larger.

  The pillar of flames rises high, and the heat could easily be felt, even from so far away. The tree in the yard catches on fire from errant debris, and something heavy and burning crashes into his house, based on the sound and shake of the foundation walls.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Niles has his head turned towards the road, covered by the concrete of his foundation, and a little more from the chimney he hid behind. He saw large chunks of buildings and cars land on the street, crushing the primitive humanoids. If it weren’t so gory and violent, he might have thought it comical.

  Not that he was completely safe either.

  The pressure wave mostly died before it reached him, and his cover shielded him from the brunt of it, yet it still knocked the wind out of him. Plus, lighter debris like glass and siding flew by, following the flow of the air, cutting up his cheeks, jacket, and backpack.

  With his face covered by his forearms, he looked through the gaps in the fence gate connecting the fence to his house. Numerous of those green creatures were shrieking in fear and pain from the wave of heat, as they were out in the open.

  Many of the ones that were just scared off ran away with minor burns and blisters.

  Meanwhile, as the aftermath started dying down, Niles turned to face the inferno that had engulfed the tree that grew up with him and the monster standing below it.

  Its pink body was now much darker, covered in blisters and burns far more severe than those of the other creatures. Its skin was now a mottled mass of dark, stiff blotches and riddled with shrapnel and debris. And yet…

  And yet it continued to focus on the burning tree, like there was something about it that had it charmed.

  But that wasn’t it. Niles only figured it out the second that the creature took a step forward, as it opened its crocodilian jaws and a river of drool spilled out, then reshaped itself.

  In a matter of seconds, what looked like a hodge-podge of many animals changed into an eldritch horror, right before his eyes. Its four stump legs widened to give it more support as its head twisted a little to one side. Then, its two jaws split like a snake’s, and again like some form of alien, and again and again until its face was circular like that of a giant worm.

  From his angle, Niles couldn’t make out what kind of teeth lined its maw. However, he had no interest or need in that information, as the creature’s now mutated face jutted out and clamped down hard on the tree trunk, splintering it and snapping it in two like the candy cigarettes he used to enjoy as a kid.

  ‘Herbivore?’ he asked himself, stunned by the entity’s voracious consumption of the still-burning barks and branches. ‘No. It’s omnivorous. The jaws from before were of a meat-eater. Not that there are many true carnivores or herbivores in nature. …Urgh! Why am I thinking about pointless crap now?’

  Niles was an outdoorsman, through and through. To the point that he chose to study nature to the best of his ability. Of course, he never went to college or university to study ecology or zoology; instead dedicating himself to self-study as he gained work experience in various trades and important industries like mining and logging.

  But because his tenacity for knowledge on the topics he enjoyed always ended up so thorough, he tended to forget where he was while recalling the information.

  Gritting his teeth, he abandoned his original escape plan of jumping the incomplete fence and running through the backyards of the following houses until he reached the woods. With all the nearby monsters having been frightened or killed by the aftermath of the gas station explosion, he decided cautiously going along the road itself would be safer.

  Leaving the eldritch monster to whatever fate its grizzly wounds will lead to, and hoping it doesn’t pick up on his trail, Niles carefully checked his surroundings outside the fence gate and started walking east towards the edge of the forest.

  A few houses down, he looked back and saw the carnage and wreckage he was leaving behind, and the rising blaze that was slowly consuming his house thanks to whatever had crashed into it. Pain rang in his heart at losing his home; however, he knew better than to allow material things hold too much power over his emotions.

  Forcing himself to remember that he had taken the pictures that his father had hung with care, focused for a second on where in his pack he had put them and continued down the street.

  His guard and senses were raised to the level he was trained to have.

  Instincts belonging to the son of a soldier and hunter who followed his father’s every word…

  In the hopes he wouldn’t disappear again.