SIRENS

• Notes

  I once applied to join an exclusive writing club in the community Scribophile.

  The moderators chose five applicants to write an audition story, with only one winner being given a membership.

  The blue section was the prompt, and the rest was mine. It’s hard to read such an old version of my writing now, but it’s part of my journey!

  And yes, I won.

  RJ

Brandon flicked the half-finished cigarette to the parched ground. He mashed the still smouldering stub beneath his stained boot. Gazing across the sunlit cornfield, he spied his prey foraging through ears of freshly harvested corn. Raising his rifle, he brought the scope to one eye and planted his prey firmly in the crosshairs. He pulled the trigger.

The crack resounded amongst the farmhouse and barns. A flock of startled birds took flight, their wings frantically beating against the heavy summer air.

“Nailed it,” he muttered, glancing nervously towards the bunker.

“You must be crazy,” came a whisper over his shoulder. “They’re killing us while we sleep and you decide to come out here to find dinner.”

Brandon still had his eye to the scope. “Keep your voice down.”

“You don’t think they already heard-”

“Lucy. Stop talking.” He reached into his pocket for a round, but it was empty. “They’re looking right at me.”

The bunker was a half-buried black box which stretched for a four-day walk across the plains. Brandon had never found an entrance and yet these creatures seemed to come and go as they pleased. Little Lucy with a thousand freckles and ringlets had been hopping shelters with her father since the towns were destroyed on the day she was born.

She nested between the tall rows of corn and the canvas bags of sandwiches and grenades. “Did they see you?” She lowered herself into the dirt. “Are they coming?”

“They’re looking over. They’re all just staring.”

“Which type is it?”

“The tall ones. Long jaw, black eyes.”

“We…you…shouldn’t have…”

Lucy’s whispers were drowned out. The entire sky filled with a blistering siren. The pulsing bunker alarms distorted Brandon’s vision as he tried to keep track of the creatures. One figure became two, and two became an army. The tall grass at every side became whipping razor wire. Blood was dripping from Brandon’s eye socket as he wrestled to keep the scope to his face.

The ground shook as though something huge was passing just inches under their bodies.

“Lucy.”

The sandpaper soil scuffed their skin raw as they were rattled again and again.

“Lucy.”

The siren looped between a ground shaking rumble and a high pitched squeal.

Brandon chanced a yell, “LUCY COVER YOUR EARS.”

He could feel the siren burrowing into his skull and it started a crack which ran through his cheekbones and split his jaw in two. The alarm worked its way through his nerves and tangled them in knots. His arms became stiff and the rifle fell from his grip into the crushed grass.

The spiralling octaves brought more swarms out of the bunker. Groups of wide eyed creatures all stood, monumental, staring at the cowering couple. Lucy looked over at her father who was face down in the dirt. His brown shirt trailed into a sticky red mash on the ground. She screamed, still covering her ears and unaware that the world was silent again and that her voice was bouncing between the bunker and the farmhouse.

Her hands were shaking and she moved them to cover her mouth. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her father’s face but she didn’t need to. She could see tiny black specks in the distance but couldn’t make out the detail. She climbed on top of her father, sobbing as she grabbed his belt to hoist herself towards the rifle. She remembered.

Slow is smooth, Smooth is fast, Pull back the bolt, Don’t let it jolt.

She rustled through her fathers pockets; deep pits of cigarette butts and pictures of her mother. She found a new box of rounds and wrestled it from the seams.

Slow is smooth, Smooth is fast, Pull back the bolt, Don’t let it jolt.

She lay prone on Brandon’s twisted back, gripping the rifle with tiny hands. She lifted her head to the scope.

The creatures had started walking towards her.

Pull back the bolt.

Thumb the round, tip first.

More of their skinny frames joined in the march, out of their hidden entrances to the bunker.

Push the bolt forward.

Take a breath.

The piercing alarm started again, ribbing the hot afternoon air with its poisonous shriek.

Fire.

The bullet cut through a creature and it dropped like a flapping chunk of meat.

“Nailed it” she whispered as she looked down at her father through tear soaked eyes.

She took aim through the scope again, but now the creatures were running towards her.

Lucy fired wildly past the stampede. They were kicking up the dirt and moved as a single cloud, rapidly approaching, increasing their speed with each round she fired in panic. The siren was cutting into her ears. She had an itch in the centre of her brain and somebody was scratching at it with broken fingernails.

She fired again. The cloud began to choke her. She fired again but the siren was too painful and she dropped the rifle. At the moment it clattered to the ground, the noise stopped.

She covered her eyes with her hands and was curled up on her father’s back. The scuffing of hooves against the dusty ground told Lucy they were standing in a circle around her. She pictured her mother in the dark palms of her hands. She could still hear her voice as it was becoming more frail from starvation.  Her words broke through the scrapes and snorts as the long-jawed creatures moved closer.

“My darling” she said, rubbing the stains of a shirt with a butter-coloured bar of soap, “No matter how small you are, you will always have your father’s shoulders. You can look all horrors in the eye and they will never forget you.”

Lucy dug her heels into her father’s back. The creatures were tightly packed in a black stain around her. The air was filled with a rotten mist and she could barely breathe. She stood as tall as she could and stared deeply into the ink filled void in the creature’s faces.

“You can look all horrors in the eye, and they will never forget you. Even if they win.”

Lucy smiled, raised her fist to the sky, and spat out the pin.