Free Through Glass: Episode Four by Rebecca Ethington

seen them disappear into a
ring of ash. I had only seen men, though, not the monsters who made
the call that broke the silence, not the creatures whose talons
filled the space with a dark click that turned my blood to
ice.
    Click.
    The sound came again, but this time it
was the click of Travis’s gun, the sound of the archaic hammer
being pulled back in preparation of attack.
    My fingers shook as I lifted them, the
aching joints mere inches from the holster, from the gun that I
still had not mastered, the gun that I knew I would have to use to
face the creatures on the other side. The creatures we had no
choice other than to face now.
    Click.
    My hand inched closer, my breath
caught in my chest as I forgot how to breathe, my muscles aching
with fear and pain as I held the breath in. Everything was
constricted as I felt the cold metal of the gun against my
fingertips.
    Click.
    I wrapped my fingers over the cold
steel, the gun feeling damp underneath the sweat that lined the
palm of my hand. I gripped the gun tightly, the thick layer of
perspiration making it hard to hold onto, letting it slip from my
hand to fall against the cold cement floor with a clatter. The
sound of the metal falling on cement erupted with a hollow sound,
it ricocheted through the dark, it screamed in my ears.
    The sound of the gun falling was the
key the creature had been waiting for, the frantic scream of the
monster exploded the silence. The sound rippled through me in a
terror that I had almost forgotten I could feel.
    I barely registered Travis’s arm as he
swept me to the side, my feet sliding against the dust that covered
the floor before my back slammed into the hard wall of the storage
room. A bright yellow light flared through the darkness as Travis
turned on yet another of his small, disk flashlights.
    The light was blinding after the dark
of the storage room, the intensity of it sending a sharp pain
through my skull, but I didn’t close my eyes, even through the
desperate pain. They only opened wide in fear, my heart pumping
ferociously as I focused on the light and what was about to walk
into it. The light ran up the grey cement walls, the layers of dust
twinkling in the drifts. It should have been beautiful, but not
then, not like this.
    Travis leaned down and scooped my gun
from where it lay, half hidden in the layers of dust that rest
around our feet. I only caught a glimpse of the green metal as it
flew through the air toward me, my hands reaching toward the weapon
I knew I would need in only seconds.
    My hand wrapped around the gritty
surface as the screech of the creatures who had hunted us sounded
again. One after another they came, ripping through the air. The
sound echoed in our ears as the room just on the other side of the
door began to fill with the sounds of our deaths, their battle cry.
They knew we were coming to face them.
    Everything tightened at the sound, my
heart turning into a lump of pain in my throat. There were too
many. I wasn’t even sure I had enough rounds in my gun.
    Travis’s jaw was a hard line of
determination as he moved toward the door, his eyes flickering to
mine as he reached toward the door knob, his hand frozen against
the metal as we stared at one another.
    Knowing what was about
happen.
    “ I love you, Travis,” I
whispered, but he could only nod before he threw the door
open.

 
    July
24 th 2021
Travis
     
    We had left the store only minutes
before. It was supposed to be a place that was safe, that perhaps
we could rest. But then I had seen the marks, the dust dragged
across the floor. I recognized the marks at once, the way shins and
hands slid through dirt and ash in a pattern that was all to
familiar, familiar because I had taught them how to do it. How to
move in the dark with only the crude night-vision specs Carson had
made. I had taught them how to kill.
    The black team.
    I wanted to say that we were safe—safe
because they hadn’t found us,—but I knew how wrong that was.
Because, if