An unnatural wind blew in through the shattered windows, a tornado train roar howling. The trailer rocked on its foundations. The bathroom door popped open, overlapping a klaxon cry with the wind.
“Twister!” said Celestia, pushing Conrad and the dogs down with her weight. Her hair whipped and stung her face. She hardly made out Pops through the carnage.
“Get to the bathroom, come on!” said Pops, beginning to reach for a dog. He toppled with the effort, and the Clarkes huddled in a heap, awaiting the end.
I’m afraid these events played out in a few seconds. The Grunks and Snargs soon came marching through the storm, making monster hunters of Celestia and Pops in due time.
Bullet casings littered the carpet. The trailer was a small armory of .22 rifles, magnum revolvers and one rusted AR-15. The winds had settled to a noteless, mocking whistle. A small thicket and narrow creek separated the trailer park from Washington Street. At first, it shielded the park from the carnage unfolding across the way. But soon the Grunks penetrated this natural barrier, to waylay the trailers. The Snargs were still occupied, tearing down houses, wall by wall.
Luckily for the Clarke''s, each collected guns, and these deadly toys lay all around the trailer. Most sat untouched until today, when necessity demanded their use. It had been a scramble to find all the weapons amid heaps of trash and dirty clothes. Celestia and Pops shoved Conrad and the dogs into Conrad''s room and began firing.
The trailer park fared better than Washington Street. Better than most of the world at that precise moment. Plenty of guns poked out from windows and cracked doors and pummeled the attackers. The Clarkes met the brunt, being closest to the creek. By seven, they''d almost run out of ammo. A dozen bloodied goblins lay before the trailer, breathing hard and refusing to die. The red bars above their heads were black, except for a small red sliver toward the end. No one knew what to make of those. And it didn''t matter, at present.
A lull came, at last. Pops lowered his .22.
"Holy shit."
And, turning to his daughter beside him.
"We gotta get more ammo. C''mon, help me look."
Celestia had drawn streaks under her eyes with black Sharpie. She held her arms wide, a magnum in her hand.
"We already used everything on the coffee table and raided all the drawers."
"Well, did you check your room? Did you check Conrad''s room?"
"Yeah, and yeah."
"Shit. What about the kitchen?"
"Pops. There’s no bullets in the kitchen.”
"I dunno, maybe some ended up in there. Jeesh!"
Pops'' attention shot to the draped window again, and he climbed back into the couch, standing on his knees.
"What was that?"
Celestia threw up her arms. The dogs exploded from Conrad''s room, followed close by Conrad.
"Hey! Get back in here!"
The little dogs were ecstatic from the noise and chaos, circling at Celestia''s feet. Conrad scooped up two of them, who yelped and squirmed in terror.
“God dammit, I need the Winchester!” said Pops, tossing a revolver as it clicked.
Celestia plugged her ears to the noise, exhausted. The dogs howled. Conrad tugged at her shirt, Dad overturned tables and threw down shelves in a mad search for ammo. Grunks revived outside, to dust their fur and continue the siege. Several dozen leathery palms slapped the trailer walls outside. The creatures hissed in a garbled little language. They lacked the strength to tear down the walls, the height to crawl through the windows. Eventually they’d figure out the doors.
Celestia stood, grabbed the smallest dog and headed toward the bedrooms, her brother in tow.
"Celestia Clarke, get back here!” said Pops. ”Help me!”
Celestia tossed the dog into the bedroom and shoved Conrad in after.
“Where the fuck are you going?” he said.
To make a suicide run for the Winchester, Celestia thought. All the way across the trailer park, in the van.
She didn''t tell her little brother she’d decided to end it that way. Maybe she’d even reach the van before the Grunks tore her apart. Of course, no one else had reached their cars outside.
"Keep the dogs in there, dude," she said, sticking a finger past him.
"I AM," said Conrad.
Celestia slammed her flimsy bedroom door. She took a portable soundbar from her unmade bed and blasted music at the highest volume. Something loud and thrashing. Fuck it, she thought, and searched through piles of dirty clothes. If she was dying today, she''d go on her own terms. Have some fun with it.
And just when shit was going good, she thought.
A year had passed since the Clarke''s opened a small coffee stand in the trailer park. Business was slow and arguments frequent between the owners. Those being Celestia and Pops. But at last they''d begun turning a profit. Not to mention, a steady boyfriend awaited Celestia only a text away. One with a dirt bike, no major felonies and a part time job. Grandma Willa had beaten cancer last year. And Celestia had scraped through Junior year, despite dropping out for several months to work. College, marriage, kids, or whatever fate looked like. All were ethereal to a kid who assumed she''d never make it to 20.
She was content, or close to it, for the first time in her life. Now, she swallowed down that hope.
The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Her body jolted to the music as she kicked clothes and garbage into the air. She pulled on several pairs of leggings confiscated from the mess. Her thickest jeans stretched over these. Three grungy tank tops, two hoodies and a pleather jacket she manhandled on. A makeshift suit of armor, uncomfortable and hot.
The screaming continued outside, drowned by the music. Celestia tried cranking the soundbar louder, but found it at max volume. Undeterred, she downed three Red Bulls in succession from the mini fridge. Fingerless gloves completed the uniform, unworn since sophomore year.
Her thoughts went to the red bars, the lettering above the monsters outside. Amidst all the madness, something in that detail tugged at her. Made her uneasy. The feeling you get when talking to a secret love. Or standing at the edge of a steep drop. Almost dizzying.
Celestia was like Pops, accepting things as they came without deeper analysis. The Clarkes were too used to scrounging for rent, fixing broken down cars. To living on the edge, below the poverty line. Anything and everything to scrape by. Somehow, the monsters felt little different. Only another disaster in a line of them. Survivors got explanations later, if any. But the bars worried her, the crimson red hue bleeding into her mind. A change had come in her lifetime. Greater than the sudden arrival of unknown species. Worse than a god''s creative wrath. Beyond any fringe conspiracy she and Pops could dream up. No. It was the change the world had awaited since the beginning. Perhaps a nightmare. Perhaps hope for a better life. She didn''t want to die in the final hour and miss it. A gulp forced the surging emotion down. The tears could wait.
She wrestled a bat from her overstuffed closet. Swung it a few times. It felt good. She was high on caffeine now.
Conrad collided with her in the hallway as she headed for the bathroom. He was shouting something over the music. Celestia patted his head with force, miming the lyrics mockingly. And she slipped into the bathroom, carrying the soundbar with her.
It was time to start hacking off her prized hair.
"Can''t kill Grunks and Snargs with all that hair in the way," she said to the Celestia in the cracked mirror.
Meanwhile, Pops fired the last of the .44 ammo through the front window. The dogs had escaped again and barked with renewed spirit, scrambling on and off the couch.
“They''re still coming across the creek!” said Pops. “Conrad, goddammit, go get the Winchester.”
“I told you!” said Conrad, “I can’t find it! You left it on the floor and it got buried.”
“It’s in the bathroom! Up against the wall.”
“CC’s in the bathroom.”
“Well, get her out!”
The bathroom sink was filled with blue-dyed strands. Jagged, uneven bangs hung over an eye. Celestia crammed it all under a beanie.
Conrad popped his head into the bathroom.
“Hey, is the Winchester in here?”
“Nooope!” said Celestia over the music. “Pops left it in the van. I gotta go get it.”
“Hey, Pops!” said Conrad. “CC says it’s in the stand.”
“What?” came a response from the living room, and several more blasts. Grunks shrieked outside, their voices like shattering glass.
Then, Celestia noticed the tablet on the floor. The Clarkes didn’t have a tablet, or even a PC. She reached for it, and the device lifted toward her hand. Celestia staggered back, raising her arms to defend herself. The object flew up and followed her movement. A stray towel skidded on the wet floor, and Celestia tripped into the wall and slid down it. The rectangle drew closer, and the teenager swiped at it, causing it to spin. The rectangle turned on its side, until it sat suspended horizontally a few feet from her eyes.
Green text generated on its black screen, as though typed by an unseen hand.
Celestia red aloud, readjusting her beanie to better see.
Quest Added: To New Beginnings
Attention. Death imminent. Please read the following tutorial and prepare for survival.
You may soon find yourself besieged by monsters. Why? How? Who cares! It’s time to join the Prodigy System and become a hero!
New Objective: Open the Terminal before survival begins
Objective: Open the Terminal before survival begins (failed)
Took you long enough! Should have opened this thing sooner! Guess you don’t have what it takes, after all. FYI, you can’t kill those things outside with guns, they’ll keep getting up! Tough.
Celestia had no frame of reference for the strange screen, or its words. As esoteric as the phenomena around her. But a gut feeling churned inside her, enough to make her dizzy. She’d accepted death seconds ago. Made peace with it as much as a 19 year old can. Now, hope intruded to complicate matters. And hope was the word gnawing at her roller coaster emotions. Tears rolled down her cheeks without her noticing. A wall came down, and a decade of pent up emotion briefly surfaced.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!” said Celestia, holding the screen in shaking hands. “I’m here, I am TOTALLY here now. We need help soo so bad, please! I don’t know what’s going on.”
Do you believe?
“Believe? Believe in what?”
In heroes, in the triumph of good over evil
“Yeah?” said Celestia, wiping a cuff across her cheeks. “Yeah, I believe, c’mon, man.”
Believe
Fight
Fight
Fight!
“Okay…okay…” she said, voice heavy with emotion. She nodded, drawing nearer the screen. “What do I do? How do I kill the things outside?”
Join Prodigy System? Y/N
Celestia stood at the cusp. The music silenced. The awful pattering hands silenced. Her finger pressed yes. It was the first true decision she’d ever made. And nothing happened.
An agonizing nothing. Slowly, reality seeped back in, the snarling, the shouting, the obnoxious beat of her own heart. The trailer began to rock. First a gentle lullabye swaying, then a violent back and forth lurch. A panic attack drew Celestia’s vision to a mindless pin prick.
And a kaleidoscope erupted before her.
The Terminal’s edges burst, and light escaped, an immense power the screen had contained. No, not only light. It had weight, substance. Celestia extended a hand to hold back the onslaught. It blew off her beanie, as tendrils of light snaked through her hair, under her clothes, and threw her body. Terror turned to awe, and awe to hope. A hope she’d never known. Not the dull maybe’s of the waking world, of minor victories over mundane depressions. The possibility of better tomorrows.
And in the ever expanding geyser of light, a shape formed. A tiny rectangle, no greater than a poker card. She reached for this. It seemed to move further from her in the maelstrom. “No!” she cried, without knowing why. An ache ran through her, and she was suddenly unbearably weary. Her vision darkened. And the card, hope manifest, fell backwards. Her life drifted backwards in the walls of light. Not coherent images or sounds, but the shape and feel of time. Every height and low of emotion hit her in waves. Broken arms, first kisses, titanic fights with dad, dead dogs, road trips, the smell of bug spray, sun showers against hot skin, burning fever, a cacophony of wet grass, kitten fur, number two pencils and silk comforters, rising! rising! dehumidifiers, broken air conditioners, jolting steering wheels, and Mom, oh god mom, rage and feverish love and the feel of velvet curtains at a funeral.
“I - I can’t hold it!” she screamed.
All of this happened in a second or two. Pops and Conrad threw open the bathroom door. They stood a moment agape, as even the chaos outside seemed tame compared to the psychedelia crashing like waves in the tiny bathroom. Celestia sat in the midst of it, reaching out to something they could hardly see. Pops and Conrad must have sensed the same otherworldly urgency Celestia did, because they fell to their knees beside her.
Words formed above them.
Error. Subject past activation period
Error. Malfunction of Prodigy System. New parameters. Activation period extended.
Pops and Conrad grabbed her arm in their hands. Together, the Clarke’s pushed into the light. As Celestia’s hand reached, the card moved faster and faster into an impossible distance. The wind and energy against them was immense, blinding. And when it seemed they might all collapse into the chasm of sound and brilliance, Celetia’s hand grasped something solid.
She pulled the card in with both hands, holding it close to her chest. The light retreated into the card. Silence.
Welcome to the Prodigy System!