I always knew that the furry little bastard was going to be the death of me. Ever since it sauntered into my life I knew that it was rubbing its furry little paws, planning my demise. Don’t let the cute expression fool you, like it did my sister, it’s a devious little creature wanting nothing more than to eradicate the human race from what’s left of our broken little civilization.

It was a clear day when the little monsters plan came to fruition. There he sat swishing his little tail back and forth, like he was keeping time on a metronome. Maybe he was, only instead of keeping a beat, he was killing people one tick at a time. He lounged edge of a pole, suspended above the 6000- plus foot drop that separated our colony from the broken planet that lay below.

I clucked. He turned his little head towards me and swished his black tail mockingly. “Muffins, c’mon sweet prince….” I called out, and then quietly, under my breath, whispered. “…..of Satan.” He turned his head and yawned. I groaned, preparing to abandon this mission and go back home, let the beast figure it out himself.

“Sissy, please save Mr. Muffins.” I huffed and looked at my sister. Huge doe like eyes, and a quivering chin, a face so full of  longing that it broke my heart. God dammit, she had me under her thumb; she knew it too.

“I’ll try my best.” Gulping I turned to look at the cat once more. Goddamn thing seemed to have moved further down the pole. By this time a group of passerby’s gathered around the abnormal spectacle, some of them throwing in their two cents on what would work better to catch the damn thing. I steeled myself and prepared to do a balancing act of a lifetime. I took off my worn loafers and climbed onto the barrier and stared down at the sheer drop that we were always taught to fear. Never get onto the barrier, my teachers told me, It’s illegal. It’s dangerous. The super scary monster that lies below’ll swallow you up. The people behind me gasped sharply, and I could hear my sister crying, telling me to come back, Muffins would be okay out there. It wouldn’t have mattered if I did abandon this mission and simply jumped down; there was a decent size group behind me that was witnessing me breaking the law. A felony punishable by years of hard labor in the engine rooms, no way to get out of this shit storm. Damn cat.

The wind whipped my hair violently, it seemed like it was an entire entity apart from itself. Like it wanted me to fall, to simply be a red mist on the ground below. Taking a deep breath I stepped forward onto the pole. It was cold, and it chilled my bare feet. Comforting in a way, and inch-by-inch I slid along the pole. I crouched low, hoping that the wind would have a harder time knocking me off. “Muffins c’mon you little asshat.” He stretched and laid his furry body along the edge of the pole. Almost like he was preparing himself to take a nap. I inched myself further down the pole, he was right there. If I reached out I could probably grab his tail. I few more shuffles and I would’ve reached him, but no, his little plan had reached the crescendo. He turned around and regarded me with his large, evil, yellow eyes. He stood swished his tale once and tried to leap over my head.

What’s a person to do when a furry little beast comes at your face? Well you obviously try to block it, and in my case the blocking meant flailing and the flailing meant I lost my balance. Losing your balance on an equivalent to a tight walker pole isn’t a smart thing to do, especially when you’re so far above the ground. But I was never the genius in my family.

So I fell. It’s no surprise to you; after all, I said that this cat was the death of me. I always thought that I’d die surrounded by snot nosed, sticky, grandchildren, in a fluffy bed, with pictures of my life’s adventures lining the walls. But nope, my death was undignified as it comes, falling off a pole, trying to save an animal that I could care less if it lived or died.

I thought that when you died you would get a flash of all your great moments in your life, but the only thing going through my mind was, “Oh fuck.” No time to think about the fact that I would be leaving my little sister in the hands of an incompetent father, and a soulless, demon cat. I guess she wouldn’t have me to protect her for forever, especially now.

O+= O+= O+= O+= O+= O+=O

Shouldn’t I be red mist on the ground right now? It felt like I had been falling for forever. I squinted my eyes open and, hey it turns out the after life is pretty sucky. A desolated landscape stood before me. Nary a person, nor animal, nor a plant, greeted me. Just a cracked earth landscape, and some tumble weeds. I turned in a circle. Again and again and again, I did this. I must’ve looked like an idiot. A shoeless woman spinning in a dessert, no wonder no one came to greet me. I spun one last time and when I stopped, I pointed my finger in the direction I would start walking. And walk I did, I wonder what I did to deserve this purgatory hell. Maybe it was the time that I stole a piece of candy from Mr. Johnson. Or maybe it was when I kissed Stacy’s boyfriend at the training center. Oh, maybe it was the time that I told my sister that her hamster “ran away” to live in the hamster colony at the bottom of the island.

“What the hell are you doing out there?” Great I was going insane, now tumbleweeds talked to me. “Psst. Crazy lady. Over here! Move your slow ass!” I stumbled towards the tumbleweed in question seeing that beneath the tumbleweed, was actually a hatch that led underground. And in that hatch was a tiny girl. “Move, they’re coming!” The they in question started to come over the small ridge in the horizon. They moved like slow oozing goo, black goo that darkened the cracked landscape, like a virus. I stood transfixed, staring at grotesque scene that was slowly coming towards me.

They were corpses, blackened corpses, they moved in a weird sorta dance formation, one would step one way and another the other way, and their arms and hands would continually jerk out and grasp imaginary items. Some looked grotesque, limbs missing, innards trailing behind them like a macabre wedding dress. Many of them looked like regular people, people that I would pass on the street and I wouldn’t think twice about them, but some of them didn’t resemble anything that I would associate as human anymore, they were just blackened putrid corpses. Black goo oozed from their orifices, soaking their clothing, and dyeing their skin shades of black.

“Fine lady suit yourself!” The tumbleweed of a girl moved to close the hatch, as I came out of my stupor. The corpses were about a football field away and I had no desire to find out what happened when they got a hold of me, living dead girl be damned.

Just before the hatch closed I shoved my much larger body into the hole. I gracelessly fell into the hole, taking the smaller girl down with me. The hatch slammed shut.

“The hell lady? You coulda’ just asked me to move.” The girl grumbled brushing her greasy hair out of her eyes. She fixed her eyes on me. “Well I’ll be damned we got ourselves a Caelus.”

“What?” Jesus Christ could I be anymore cliché? That’s first thing I say to a new strange person and that’s the line that comes out of my mouth. No inquiring what the hell those things were outside, or how they got that way. Or ask if I was dead, in purgatory, or even hell.

“You my dear are about 40 miles south of Phoenix, Arizona, in the middle of our lovely desert.” That description didn’t mean much to me, for all I knew I was in a subset of hell called Arizona. It felt hot enough after all. “Well I can see from the look on your face you have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re on earth, or as you Caelus’s like to call it, Solum.”

I’m on Solum. Holy mother of god, my history teachers were all wrong. Ha! I could feel the manic giggle building itself up in my chest. We were always told that there was nothing left but radiated ground, and destruction underneath us. If we were to go down there it would be a death sentence, the monsters would devoured our body and soul, and we’d be punished for all eternity. My laughter escaped in a high-pitched chuckle. The girl across from me looked at me warily.

“I’m not dead?” I gasped through my laughter. “I just fell thousands of feet, how am I not dead?” I was in shock, I realized as I continued laughing. Everything I was told about Solum growing up was a big fat lie. My little sister was being force-fed those lies right now. They would tell her that I was dead and she would believe them, what choice did she have? It’s not like I had incredible rope climbing skills to bring myself back to her, even if I could find my platform.

“Well our government set up some machines to catch fallers from the islands. They’re called Servos, good ole’ Servys. Once you reach a certain distance from the ground they transport you to the nearest safe base. Which happened to be this little hovel.” She quirked her eyebrow. “Where are your shoes?”

O+= O+= O+= O+= O+= O+=O

I learned that her name was Nara, and she had been born on Solum. She was doing a supply mission in a town a couple miles from here when her radar picked up a horde coming straight for her. She got in something called a truck and sped to the nearest safe location, which happened to be around time that I crash-landed.

The things that I witnessed coming over the ridge were Animats, reanimated corpses that fed on the living. There was a virus about the time that sky islands were in development. The virus sped up their production, and within a couple months the first islands were up and running for the wealthy, and politicians. They boarded as many able bodied engineers to keep the islands afloat and working and took to the skies. Living in the lap of luxury while they waited for the virus to blow over. Only the situation got worse. More and more people became sick, large cities were overrun and the President; decided that it would be best for humanity to bomb the ground below.

Nukes were set off in the major cities, while small cluster missiles hit the surrounding areas, hoping to eradicate the damage that the virus had done. Hoping to eradicate the people who had the virus. The remaining people on Solum suffered, my people, they eventually built their own sky islands with the limited resources that they scavenged from junk yards and building, to try and escape the ground that was slowly killing them. Starving them, making them sick, irradiating their entire being. They created patchwork islands and those island, I assumed, became my home. It was never a glamorous place like the leaders of our sections whose places were built of chrome and marble, and shined like the sun above us. Ours were built of copper and mesh of metal, a metaphor for our class, never purebred, always patchwork.

We stayed in the bunker for hours. Every time Nara thought it was clear to go we would hear the thump of shambling footsteps above, forcing us to stay long into the night. I curled into the corner and fell into a restless sleep. I would love to tell you that I had flowery dreams of sunshine and puppy dogs, but the truth was I kept dreaming about Muffins. Fucking Muffins, if I could turn back time I’d take the damn cat down with me and feed it to an Animat.

I was woken up by a nudge to my thigh. “Let’s go Eyna! It’s time to hit the road.” She shoved a hammer into my hand and bounded up the steps. “They get close to you, crack em’ in the head.” She threw open the hatch and out she went. Guess who was a damn morning person? My sister was a morning person and it drove me nuts. Morning people to me are the equivalent to pigeons, useless and everywhere you don’t want them to be.

I got to me feet and stumbled drunkenly up the stairs, my body was still trying to wake the hell up. I yawned and emerged into the bright sunlight of a fresh morning. Why was it so bright? I thought blearily as I stumbled after Nara on bare feet. As far as my squinted eyes could see there were no Animats hanging around. The ground was discolored by black goo that I tried fruitlessly to avoid, that shit was everywhere.

“Move it slowpoke!” Nara called. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today before we get into the city!” I lifted one finger to the wind. Her small body bounced into a mechanical monstrosity. It was a giant metal contraption with scoops on the front, wheels that were at my hips, and it was covered in gore and goo. I stood shell-shocked for a moment before I gracelessly clamored into the passenger side.

“I know it’s small, but it does what we need it to do.” She shrugged and started up the beast, the thing made a deafening rumble and it started to move. I blindly grasped anything I could as she picked up speed. It felt like we were flying across the landscape, wind whipped my hair violently from the open window. I had never been in anything that moved this fast.

“Yeah, sure, small. It’s small like my ass trying to fit into a medium sized pair of pants.” I breathed trying to make light of the situation that was clearly freaking the heck out of me.

Nara snorted a laugh, and then consol beeped to life. “Oh no.”

“Oh no? What ‘oh no’? You don’t tell a girl ‘oh no’ when you’re giving her the ride of her life.” I started to panic. If Nara says oh no then shit’s about to go down, a bright and cheery person never says ‘oh no’ just for the hell of it.

“Another horde is comin’ our way. We’re too close to the sky islands, they hunt by scent and by sound, the engines that keep the sky islands up make a hell of a noise.”

“Well go faster!” I all but shouted.

“Not gonna work, they’ll hit us before we get far enough away. We’re gonna have to go through them.” She hit a button on the console, and the windows popped into place, only they weren’t glass like I expected, they were large metal sheets, welded together. She hit another button and metal bars extended across the windshield. “It won’t do much if we crash, but it’ll buy us some time. By any chance you know how to use a gun?” I looked at her incredulously my eyes must’ve been as wide as dinner plates. “Didn’t think so, damn. I wish Lyall was here, he’s a hell of a shot.” I was about to ask who that was when I noticed the first of the Animats appearing in the horizon. “Buckle up sweet cheeks. The fun’s about to start.” She grinned manically and picked up speed. She grabbed the strap next to her and snapped it into place. I did the same with mine and braced myself for the oncoming storm.

A couple of seconds latter we hit the first one, it hit the giant scoop at a wrong angle and the head popped off, splattering the windshield with black goo. After the first ten I lost count to how many we were hitting. It seemed like the more we powered through the more appeared. From my limited view that was slowly being blocked my splatters of black goo, the windshield wipers had since stopped working, we were surrounded as far as my eyes could see. We made it a few more feet but then we lurched. The wheels spinning but not moving anywhere, we were effectively stuck.

“Shit, we’re not getting any traction.” The Animats realizing that their death machine was at a standstill started to pound on the windows. “The bodies must’ve jammed the wheels.” She picked up the radio that was on the consol. “This is Batman, we’re stuck 20 miles north of Phoenix, a horde is surrounding us. I’ve got a Caelus with me. Over.” The radio crackled, and then a gravely voice emerged through the static.

“Batman, this is Aquaman, squad is on their way, t-minus 15 minutes. Perform defensive maneuvers. Over”

“I’m going up to the roof,” She unhooked her seatbelt. “if anything goes wrong, close the hatch and when the team arrives tell them that you’re a Caelus. If Animats break through the window use your hammer, aim for the head.” She stood and unlocked the hatch and pulled her body up to the unknown. I held onto my hammer like it was an extension on myself. If I thought that the truck was deafening the gun was even worse than that. It was continuous; it raddled the truck with each blast. The worst part of it was that it didn’t even seem to help anything, if anything the banging got worse. I felt like I was going to throw up, I was terrified.

“Wooo!” Nara shouted from above, I’m glad that someone was having fun. She stopped firing. “Over here you lazy bastards!” The banging persisted. It had to be safer up there, higher ground an all that crap, right? I mean look what my ancestors did. I threw my hammer on the seat beside me and unclipped my seatbelt, and poked my head through the top. I was surprised to see that there weren’t many Animats left fifty at most, but it seemed like the gunfire took care of most of them. Nara was stood up there waving her arms around flagging the incoming truck that looked like a Monster compared to this baby truck. “It’s safe enough Enya, they can’t reach us up here, I’m out of ammo anyways.” She called down to me offering me her hand to help pull me up. I declined it, she looked to be ninty pounds soaking wet I wouldn’t want to accidently punt her off the truck into the horde, even though I was probably only fifty pounds heavier than her.

I struggled up onto the roof, awkwardly contorting my leg to manage the feat. I righted myself just as the monster truck pulled up. As it rolled to a stop a buff black man popped through an identical hatch in the roof and started to take pot shots at the Animats further out. The side doors opened and two more men jumped out one with a machete and another with a crossbow. Machete man beheaded and decapitated any that got close, clearing a circle around our truck, and the archer took out as many close to the truck as he could, sheathing his weapon when he ran out of bolts and using a large hunting knife on the remaining. In no time the area around us was cleared.

“Lyall!” Nara jumped down from the truck landing gracefully as she ran to embrace the crossbow wielding man. “I didn’t know they’d send you.”

“Well you didn’t come back last night, we thought you were dead.” He chuckled. “Didn’t know that I had to come rescue your sorry ass, sis.” He nookied her head affectionately under his arm. It was an action that I did affectionately to my sister a thousand times before, and I smiled at siblings.

“Stop! Stop!” She pleaded through her gasps of laughter. “Uncle!” He patted her head and let her go. “I found a Caelus.” She remarked beaming at him.

“Useful?” He asked. Nara screwed up her face and shook her head. “Damn”

I felt mildly insulted. I could be useful. I could sew, and I was the best at division in my math class. I was well read, and I took care of my sister pretty damn well.

I looked for a less gory path down the truck, and I realized it was an impossible endeavor to try and get myself out of this mess without getting gunk everywhere. I tried to follow Nara’s path but I realized that I wasn’t a graceful fucking pixie and ended up sliding my way down the truck covering my pants and most of my back in goo and landing a heap on a pile of corpses. It was one of those moments that I just wanted to curl up in a ball and die. There I sat, three new people whom I haven’t properly introduced myself to, covered in goo, sitting on corpses.

My brain then caught up to me, realizing the “oh shit” moment, and realizing that I was on a pile of putrid dead bodies. What would any sane person do? They would vomit. So that’s what I did. Leaning to my right I purged everything that was in my stomach. I wiped my mouth when I finished, but didn’t bother looking up to see the disgust of their faces. I just tried to focus on getting myself out of the pile of dead people.

If you know anything about a human body you know that they have fleshy parts. The fleshy parts are especially fragile when they are rotting. Any attempt that I made to try and pick myself up was useless since my hands kept going through the fleshy parts, and emerging covered in goo. Which made my stomach heave, and for once I was thankful that I had vomited everything out since I surly would’ve been doing it again if I had not. I probably smelled worse than the corpses at the moment. It was probably the seventh attempt when someone took pity on me.

“Take my hand.” I looked up it was the black man that was atop the truck earlier. His face was twisted in disgust, it was completely clear that he had no desire to be there. I tried to wipe some of the goo on a cleanish area of my pants but it probably had no effect on my cleanliness of my hand. I slapped my hand in his, it made a loud squelching noise, and he hoisted me to my feet and helped me step over the corpses, careful to not let any other part of my body touch him.

“My names Enya.” As if telling him my name would make him think of me any other way besides the girl covered in goo. As soon as we cleared the corpses he dropped my hand like it was on fire and retreated a few steps away from me.

“Ajax.” He nodded to me. “Wipes I need wipes. That shit’ll stay on my hands for forever if I don’t get it off.” He called to the group as he turned away.

“Wait, what?” Fuck I was going to be stained black.

“That stuff’s like tar, Enya. We need to get you back to base. They’ll probably be able to get it off of your skin, but your clothes are screwed. You need to get them off before they adhere.” Nara tried to say that as gently as possible, she clearly didn’t want me to freak out. Clothes, sure no big deal, the problem was that I had long hair, the length of my hair was covered in the stuff. The worse part was that I was going to be in my underwear in front of three strange men.

I started with the simplest item to get off first my pants; they used to be a nice tan color, now they were nearly all soiled. Unbuttoning and unzipping them was probably the easiest part of shucking them off of my body. The goo seemed to weld them to my legs, I pulled out hairs I never knew I had missed shaving. They plopped onto the ground wetly after many minutes of struggle. I was dreading taking off the shirt because I knew that that would be awful trying to avoid getting it caught in my hair. Then I had a genius idea, I could cut them off. “Nara do you have a pair of scissors by chance?” She shook her head no, but unsheathed her brothers hunting knife stealthily and offered me. I took it hesitantly, trying to minimize the amount of goo on it.

“Hurry up, another horde is about 15 miles west, and we don’t want to be caught in that fuckery.” Lyall grumbled clearly peeved that I was handling his precious weapon, probably damaging it with my goo covered hand.

Now the tricky part was to not stab myself with the pointy end. The blade was quite sharp and even with the awful coating of the tar like substance soiling the shirt it made quick work of it. I removed the vest I had created with some pained groans as I separated it from my hair, and much profanity. Thankfully my undergarments were only splattered with a couple of dots of goo, which I didn’t think would cause much of a problem. My hair was the problem now, but I didn’t want to attempt to cut it off with a hunting knife. I gave the knife back to Nara and curled protectively around myself trying to block as much skin from view as possible.

I knew that it was useless, but I’m pretty sure that none of the guys were getting any sexy vibes from my state of undress right now. After all I smelled like a corpse, and my feet, arms, face, and hair were soaked with goo. I had things under my fingernails that I didn’t even want to think about right now.

“We’ll come back to pick up our vehicle later, the horde is coming in too fast. Time to get the hell outta dodge. Nara, sit with her in the back miss falls a lot, goo is a bitch to get out of leather.” Lyall jumped in the drivers seat and roared the truck to life, the two other guys followed him in, Nara led me to the double doors in the back and helped me climb in. Inside was a bunch of extra guns, a few nondescript red tanks, and blue jugs that held water. On the sides of the interior were a couple of metal benches, underneath had a couple of cardboard boxes. Nara closed the doors and clicked on the tiny light above our heads.

“Let’s try to clean you up some.” I snorted, I felt like I needed new skin to be able to feel clean again. She pulled one of the water jugs to her and fished a cloth from one of the boxes, and dunked the cloth into the water. She handed it to me and gestured to my face. I figured that there was no use in being gentle so I rubbed my face like I was waxing the marble floors in the sector leaders homes. I felt like the first layer of my skin was separating from my face. When I finished I removed the cloth, it was completely discolored. “Much better. There’s still some there but with some hot water you’ll be able to get most of it off.” Nara hesitated. “Your hair though, it’s not gonna make it.” I already knew that, if I was lucky it would rest a bit above my shoulders.

“I know. But hey it’s a new me, new life. It’s time for a new change.” I tried to smile, but I really loved my damn hair.

O+= O+= O+= O+= O+= O+=O

We drove for a long while, every so often we would hit a bump large enough to jostle us around, but for the most part it was a smooth journey, despite the fact that I was sweating my metaphorical balls off.

The truck pulled to a stop, a couple of thumps and then a door slamming greeted my ears. Then the back door was pulled open and the bright light blinded me for a moment. Once I was able to focus my vision on the landscape that came into view I blanched. Shit, why were there so many people? From Nara’s explanation of the people left, I had the impression that there were only a handful left. People of all shapes, sizes and races surrounded the back of the truck, and here I was in my underwear. Nara stood and helped me out of the back, no need to have another repeat of how I ended up this way. “I’m gonna take you to Marge, she’ll be able to clean you up a bit.”

Marge ended up being a robust red headed woman with mountains for breasts, and wide child bearing hips, which no doubt had borne a couple of babies. She took one look at me and growled. “Tha fuck ya bring me Nars? Jesus H Christ, Billy cancel all my other appointments.” She gripped my elbow in a steel grip and dragged me to the back of her shop, and shoved me into a tin bathtub of scalding water. I yelped and she pushed me under the water, every so often she would lift me up of air and mutter some curses. “I’m gonna need the steel brush.”

After a good solid hour of constant scrubbing, I was clean? I mean it felt like I had my skin removed and pasted on backwards. It hurt to walk or have anything touch my lobster red tinged skin. “This hair’ll hafta go.” She grumbled poking at my sticky newly black locks. She gestured for me to sit on one of the wooden stools in front of the many mirrors in the barbershop, and waved a pair of scissors menacingly. Maybe that was her way of asking permission for her to cut it, so I simply nodded and closed my eyes. Beside’s Marge’s soft body there was no softness, or kindness to her touch. It was like the universe got it all wrong, the creamy center was outside and the hard exterior was inside. She pulled and tore at my hair for a good thirty minutes before she proclaimed that she was done and that Nara was kind enough to scrounge up some clothes and a pair of shoes for me. I opened my eyes afraid at what I’d see and rightly so. It looked like all she did was cut off locks that were stained black, leaving me with uneven clumps of hair closely cut to my head. I looked like a prepubescent boy; if Marge was a stylist here I would shutter to think what a good job looked like.

The clothes that Nara selected were a bit too big, and the shoes a bit too small. The pair of jeans that hung off my hips in an unflattering manner, and a giant cotton tank top made me look like I had a unaboob. The shoes were a sturdy green cloth with a white rubber sole, they was a half size too small, but it felt nice to have something to cover my feet again. The items stuck to my wet underwear, but I was thankful that I had something to cover myself in again.

O+= O+= O+= O+= O+= O+=O

The days following were a mess of interviews and survival tests that I had no idea how to pass. What city kid knows how to load and accurately fire an M16 at a group of Animats while on top of a slow moving truck? I nearly dislocated my shoulder doing that. Nara was kind enough to let me stay in a small wooden shack with her and her brother while their leaders would decide to relocate me or let me stay with them.

It was another week before I was called into the mayor’s office. As I left Nara gave me a small smile of encouragement and wished me good luck. The mayor of this little town was a hulk of a man named Treun, His width was two of me’s put together. I wouldn’t ever want to get in a fight with him; I pity the souls that did. His face and much of his body was decorated with a criss cross of angry red jagged scars. The few times I had met him in the past week he was always carrying a massive gun. Today was no exception. I guess every man must have his love, and that gun seemed to be his. I didn’t doubt that he had it loaded and ready to go, even in his sparse office he was always ready to mow down any Animats that wandered into his office.

“Sit Miss Husher.” I took a seat on the little splintered stool he offered me. “You didn’t do well in your evaluations. In fact you have been the worst recruit we’ve had in years, but I see something in you that can be molded and harnessed.” He sighed. “I could put you on kitchen duty and you could continue to live with Nara, maybe even find a husband, but I feel like you’d be stifled in that environment. You’d wilt and harbor resentment for the life you’d be forced to live. So what I’m going to do is recommend you to the guard division.” What the fuck, was the only thought that was going through my mind at the moment. “Your training will start on Monday.”

Fucking Muffins.