Cliff could hear them searching. The snuffling, growling of the creatures filled his ears; first coming closer, then moving away for a bit before coming near again. He prayed they wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t smell him hiding beneath the pile of mangled, dead bodies that he had wriggled into in desperation.

All he could smell was the putrefying scent of the bodies, baking under the hot sun, and all he could see when he cared to open his eyes was the ripped limbs, bloody torsos and, for one horrific instant, the staring, screaming face of his nephew before the pile shifted under its weight and blocked the poor child’s dead gaze.

Cliff heard claws scraping on the ground and the pile of bodies he hid under shuddered for a moment as one of the creatures grabbed a body from the top of the pile and tore it apart with a sickening, wet tearing noise followed by the gnashing of teeth. There was a slurping noise, akin to someone inhaling a long, saucy piece of spaghetti and then the pile shuddered once more as the remains of the body was tossed back on it. The man trapped inside the pile breathed a soft sigh of relief, grateful he had decided to burrow as far into the morbid pile as he could.

As the day wore on, the noises from the creatures became less frequent and further away until, finally, they had ceased all together. He still waited long after the creatures were silent, just in case one had decided to stick around the village. Eventually, the growing stench of the bodies forced Cliff to wriggle free, doing his best not to notice the severed limbs or the smashed faces of the bodies he moved over and under.

It felt like ages, but shortly after he started moving, the man’s head emerged from the body pile and he sucked in clean air for the first time since morning. He dragged himself the rest of the way free and stood slowly on shaking legs to look around him. He immediately regretted the decision, as his stomach forced its way up to his throat and he threw up bile on the ground in front of him.

He stood there for a long minute, hands on bloody legs as he breathed in slowly, trying to calm his stomach to the point that he could look around again. Finally, he looked around again, steeling himself for the gruesome sights.

All around the village was evidence of the attack. The body pile he had emerged from was by far the largest, but smaller piles could be seen up and down the street. Directly across from him was the grocer’s shop, usually a lively store operated by a plump, smiling woman whose husband had passed on many years before. Her heart would break if she saw the state her shop was in now, blood splattered on the whitewashed sign and the door hanging from a single hinge. The front window had been smashed when the woman had been flung through it like a rag doll, her blood drying on the sharp edges. Her body was no where to be seen now, but he had seen one of the creatures tear her head off after she had been flung from the window, and her screams as they did so still echoed in his mind. It was not something he was likely to forget anytime soon.

Beside the grocer, behind cast iron fences that were bent and twisted out of shape, was the schoolhouse. He shuddered, not wanting to look at the carnage in the schoolyard, but his eyes seemed to have a mind of their own. The front steps were painted with blood and a small torso with half a leg and no arms or head was propped up at the top, like some macabre mascot. In the playground, he could see another body, this one smashed face first into the ground, nearly completely flattened. One of the arms had been completely stripped of flesh and the other reached towards the man as though begging for help.

Beyond that squashed body, another small form was draped over the cast-iron fencing, one of the pointed embellishments bursting through the child’s chest. The eyes had been plucked from the child’s face, leaving the poor form to stare sightlessly at the schoolyard.

Unable to look at the small, torn bodies any longer, Cliff turned away from the school and walked carefully down the street, watching his feet so that he did not slip in one of the congealing pools of blood that dotted the street like the puddles after a rainfall. On occasion he had to step over a torn limb or around a broken body. Slowly, steadily, he made his way to his home. He had been almost at the grocer’s when the attack started, and although he suspected what he would find, he still needed to see if his wife and children were alright. He didn’t bother to stop at his sister’s home on the way, he already knew what had happened to her son and her – he had just waved goodbye to them at the school when one of the creatures had bounded out of an alley and torn the small boy from her arms. His sister had screamed and tried to get the boy back, reaching for the small, struggling form. The only reward for her efforts had been the boy being flung so hard his back broke upon impact and gnashing teeth closing around her throat. Cliff squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the image but that only made it worse.

He trudged past his sister’s home, whispering a silent prayer to her and her son before moving towards his own home. He silently prayed that his wife would be safely hidden away in their cellar, the two young children with her, but his heart knew what he would find.

As he approached his home, he could see a waft of smoke coming from the kitchen window – probably from the children’s breakfast, still burning on the stove, Cliff mused, trying to keep his mind off what he would find.

The first signs that the creatures had been at his home was the front door lying inside the front hall and one of the porch steps was spilt down the middle. The next sign was the blood in the kitchen.

Bright red blood, slowly drying to a dirty brown, was splattered over the normally pristine kitchen, “Jenna is going to be so mad when she sees this.” Cliff thought to himself, knowing how his wife liked to keep the kitchen spotless. As he had anticipated, the stove held the burnt remains of scrambled eggs and at the table were three places set, a glass of orange juice sitting by each plate.

Aside from the splattered blood and burnt food, there was no sign in the kitchen that the creatures had been there.

Cliff walked slowly from the kitchen into the living room to find what he had been dreading.

Jenna had clearly tried to protect the children and had died with a fire poker in her hands. Her throat had been ripped away and she lay in a pool of her congealing blood, blond hair stained red. The creatures hadn’t touched her after she had died, and had turned their attention to the two small children that she had been protecting.

Of the children’s bodies there was no sign, but he found a bloody sock that had belonged to their youngest.

Cliff sank to the ground, heedless that he was kneeling in his dead wife’s blood, and clutched the sticky sock like he would die if he ever let go. The tears streamed freely down his face and his body wracked with silent sobs. He could have gotten through this, if only they had survived. He could have been strong for his family.

As he knelt there, sobbing silently into the sock, he heard a small noise from the nearby linen closest, a muffled, choked sob. Cliff froze, not quite believing what he’d heard. but then the muffled sob came again.

Moving faster than he thought possible, Cliff scrambled to the linen closet and pulled open the door, half fearing what he would find.

There, nestled on one of the quilts on the floor was his son, his eldest. The boy was traumatized, curled in a ball and sobbing quietly to himself. He flinched when the light fell on him, but otherwise didn’t look up or react to his father.

“Oh, Dawson, oh no” Cliff reached out and gathered the young boy in his arms, pressing the child’s head to his shoulder as he left the bloody living room and made his way to the relative safety of the basement where they had a hideaway nest that, had there been warning of the attack, the whole family would have fit into.
As it was, the cubby was spacious for Cliff and Dawson, though the young boy hardly registered where they were.

Cliff sat there, looking down at his exhausted son, knowing that now he could rebuild. Now he could keep going. Tomorrow he would look around town better, see if anyone else had survived, and then they would rebuild. Maybe not here, but somewhere.

The creatures weren’t going to win, not this time.