The cracked earth sighed underfoot, a sound mirroring the weariness in Jean-Pierre's bones. Twenty-six years had etched themselves onto his face, a map of harsh suns and hunger, of displacement and unending unease.
He walked, not with purpose, but with the ingrained momentum of someone who had been walking for a lifetime, the horizon a cruel mistress always receding.
Dust, the color of dried blood, coated everything. It clung to the sparse vegetation, skeletal trees that clawed at a sky bleached white by an unforgiving sun.
Silence pressed down, a heavy blanket broken only by the rasp of his own breath and the occasional skittering of unseen creatures in the parched undergrowth.
It was a silence that swallowed sound, that felt pregnant with a threat he could not name, only sense in the tightening of his gut.
He had left his village weeks ago, or perhaps months. Time had become a fluid thing, marked not by days or moons, but by the diminishing water in his gourd and the gnawing emptiness in his belly.
The village, once a place of fragile community, was now only a ghost in his memory, ravaged by sickness and fear – fear of what stalked the darkening edges of their world.
A faint, unsettling sound pricked the silence. It was high-pitched, almost like a shriek, but laced with a mechanical whine that sent a tremor of unease through him. He paused, head tilted, straining to place it.
The sound was faint, carried on the arid drafts, and seemed to come from some uncertain location beyond the skeletal trees.
Doubt gnawed at him. It could be anything – a bird, warped and distorted by the strange currents in the atmosphere, or some animal he did not recognize.
This land had become a theater of oddities, a place where the familiar rules seemed to fray and unravel. Still, the mechanical undertone was too distinct to dismiss entirely.
Jean-Pierre shifted his meager possessions – a worn cloth bundle and the gourd – adjusting their weight against his back.
He turned, drawn by a morbid curiosity towards the source of the noise. Cautiously, he moved between the trees, their branches like brittle fingers reaching to snag him, each shadow seeming to deepen and twist in his peripheral sight.
The sound grew louder, sharper, closer. It was no bird. The mechanical whine was more pronounced now, coupled with a chittering, almost simian sound, yet colder, more metallic.
A knot of dread tightened in his chest, a primal fear surfacing, something ancient and unreasoned.
He pushed through a screen of withered bushes and stopped abruptly. The landscape opened before him into a shallow, cracked valley. And there, suspended against the pale sky, were things that defied any logic he possessed.
Monkeys. But not ordinary monkeys. These were larger, their fur a sickly grey, their eyes burning points of crimson against the pallid daylight.
And they were airborne, not through flapping wings, but by some unseen force, hanging in the currents, drifting, swirling, as if tethered to invisible threads.
That was not the true horror. The horror was what they carried.
Each monkey clutched something dark and angular in its forepaws. At first, they resembled branches, twisted pieces of wood, but as Jean-Pierre's vision sharpened, sharpened by a terror that squeezed the breath from his lungs, he understood.
They were weapons. Crude, yet unmistakably weapons. Black metal glinted in the harsh sun, and he recognized the chilling silhouette of gun barrels.
The whine he had heard was not animalistic. It was the metallic friction of machinery, of moving parts. It was the sound of death carried on the wind.
One of the creatures, drifting closer, spotted him. Its crimson eyes locked onto Jean-Pierre, and a guttural shriek tore from its throat, a sound that was part animal fury, part something cold and manufactured. It raised its weapon, the dark barrel pointing directly at him.
Jean-Pierre did not think. He reacted. Instinct, honed by a lifetime of survival in a world that offered little mercy, took over. He dropped to the cracked earth, scrambling for cover behind a cluster of rocks, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
A sharp crack echoed through the valley, followed by the whine of something passing close overhead. He dared not look. He could feel the unnatural disturbances in the currents around him, the fluttering of unseen propulsion, the chilling presence of those things above.
"Stay down!" a voice rasped nearby, startling him.
Jean-Pierre flinched, twisting around. A figure emerged from behind a larger rock formation, a woman, gaunt and etched with exhaustion, her eyes wide and wary. She carried a battered, rusting rifle, held loosely in her grip.
"They hunt in packs," she whispered, her voice rough as stone. "Seen them before?"
He shook his head, his voice caught in his throat. "No. Monkeys… with… weapons." The words felt ludicrous, absurd, yet the terror was starkly real.
"Flyers," she corrected, her lips twisting into a grim smile without mirth. "Some call them Flyers. Some call them other things, names I won't repeat." She gestured with her rifle. "They ain't natural."
"What are they?" Jean-Pierre finally managed, his voice a hoarse whisper.
She shrugged, her gaze never leaving the sky. "Don't know. Don't think anyone does, truly. Came with the sickness, maybe. Came with… everything falling apart." She paused, her eyes hardening. "Don't matter what they are. Matters what they do."
Another shot cracked through the silence, closer this time. A chunk of rock exploded beside Jean-Pierre, showering him with splinters and dust. He gasped, recoiling instinctively.
"See?" the woman said, her voice laced with bitter pragmatism. "They're hunting. And they are not messing around." She levered a round into her rifle, the metallic click sharp in the stillness. "Name's Imbila."
"Jean-Pierre." He said, his voice still shaky.
"Jean-Pierre," Imbila repeated, assessing him with a practiced eye. "You got a weapon?"
He shook his head again, shame burning in his chest. He had nothing, save for the clothes on his back and the meager contents of his bundle. He was defenseless.
"Figures," Imbila sighed, but there was no judgment in her tone, only resignation. "Stick close. Two rifles are better than one… and one rifle and nothing is just… well, it's not good."
They huddled behind the rocks, the silence punctuated by the intermittent cracks of gunfire and the chilling whine of the Flyers circling overhead. Imbila scanned the sky, her movements economical, trained. Jean-Pierre watched her, a sliver of hope flickering amidst the despair. Perhaps, with her, he had a chance.
"Heard stories," Imbila murmured, her voice low, almost to herself. "Stories of people trying to fight them. Big groups, armed. Didn't work."
"Why not?" Jean-Pierre asked.
"Too many," she said simply. "And they… they don't tire. They just keep coming. And they see you from… high. Hard to hide." Her gaze dropped, a flicker of something dark in her eyes. "Heard they like to take… things."
"Take things?" Jean-Pierre prompted, a cold dread creeping into his blood.
Imbila turned her gaze fully onto him then, and for the first time, he saw the true depth of despair etched into her face. It wasn't just weariness, it was something broken, something hollowed out.
"Not just things," she corrected, her voice barely audible. "People. Heard they take people. For… something." She didn't elaborate, and Jean-Pierre didn't press. The unspoken hung between them, heavier than the dust, thicker than the silence.
Hours crawled by, marked by the relentless harassment of the Flyers. They were like maddened wasps, buzzing and stinging, their shots chipping away at the rocks around them, forcing them to shift positions constantly, deeper into the barren valley. Imbila fired back sparingly, carefully, conserving her ammunition. Each shot was precise, economical. But it felt futile, a pinprick against a storm.
As dusk began to bleed into the sky, painting the white canvas in hues of bruised purple and angry orange, the Flyers seemed to grow bolder.
They descended lower, their shrieks more frequent, more aggressive. The air thrummed with the unnatural sound of their propulsion, a metallic vibration that resonated deep within Jean-Pierre's bones.
"They get worse at night," Imbila said, her voice laced with fatigue. "Dark, they get bolder. Less to see them coming, I reckon."
"What do we do?" Jean-Pierre asked, his voice tight with rising panic. The sun was sinking rapidly, and the shadows were lengthening, stretching like grasping claws across the valley floor.
Imbila looked at him, her eyes bleak, devoid of any false comfort. "We run," she stated flatly. "Try to outrun them. Maybe get to the woodland edge. Maybe…" Her voice trailed off, the unspoken "maybe not" hanging in the twilight.
They moved under the cloak of deepening shadow, Imbila leading, her rifle held ready, Jean-Pierre stumbling behind, fear lending him a desperate kind of speed. The ground was treacherous, littered with loose stones and hidden crevices, but they pressed on, driven by the relentless whine of the Flyers behind them.
Suddenly, a flare ripped through the darkness, bathing the valley in harsh, white light. They froze, caught in the sudden illumination, exposed and vulnerable. Above them, the Flyers shrieked, a triumphant, chilling chorus. They were illuminated, stark against the darkening sky.
"Run!" Imbila yelled, shoving Jean-Pierre forward. "Run, damn you, run!"
They bolted, scrambling across the uneven ground, the harsh light of the flare burning into their eyes. Shots cracked around them, closer now, too close. Jean-Pierre felt a searing pain lance through his arm, and he stumbled, crying out.
Imbila whirled back, firing into the air, a futile gesture of defiance. "Jean-Pierre, go! Get to the trees!"
He looked at her, his vision blurring with pain, and saw the grim determination in her eyes, the acceptance of what was coming. He knew, with a cold certainty, that she was buying him time. Buying him a chance that she herself would not take.
"No," he whispered, his voice cracking.
"Go!" she screamed again, her voice ragged. "It's the only way!"
He hesitated for a heartbeat, torn between the desperate urge to flee and the terrible knowledge of what he was leaving behind. Then, the choice was ripped from him.
A shadow fell over Imbila. One of the Flyers, larger than the others, descended with terrifying speed, its crimson eyes burning in the flare light. It dropped onto her with a sickening thud, its simian hands, now tipped with metal claws, tearing at her.
Imbila screamed, a raw, animalistic sound that was abruptly cut short. Jean-Pierre watched, paralyzed, as the Flyer dragged her struggling form upwards, its powerful limbs straining, its weapon discarded on the dust. Other Flyers descended, joining in a frenzy of chittering and tearing.
The flare sputtered and died, plunging the valley back into darkness, but the image was seared onto Jean-Pierre's retinas – Imbila, vanishing into the night sky, carried away by creatures that should not exist.
The silence returned, heavier now, more absolute, broken only by a faint, receding whine, a chilling mechanical hum that faded into the vast emptiness.
He stood there, alone, the pain in his arm a dull throb compared to the gaping wound in his soul. He had run, he had survived, as Imbila had commanded. But survival had come at a price, a price too terrible to bear.
He looked up at the starless sky, the darkness swallowing everything, and understood. There was no escape, not truly.
There was only the long, slow unraveling, the endless walk across the cracked earth, haunted by the image of crimson eyes and the mechanical whine of death on the wind.
His village was gone, his hope was gone, and now, even the fleeting companionship, the shared despair, was torn away.
He was truly, utterly alone, walking in a world consumed by shadows, hunted by monsters, with nothing left to lose but the last flickering ember of his own life.
And even that, he knew, was not his to keep. It was only a matter of time before the Flyers returned. And this time, there would be no one left to run.