She knelt by Madeline’s side, trickling her fingers through her hair, its every strand gleaming silver in the headlights. Amidst the storm raging around them, there was finally peace. The woman had subdued those dormant instincts that had awoken so violently, severing – once and for all – the ancient ties binding her to the life she’d abandoned. Her body had repossessed its old form, but the agonising act of doing so had left her broken. She needed time to heal. But Mina couldn’t keep from glancing to the darkness that cloaked them on all sides, dreading some final twist after having survived against the odds yet again. They were too exposed. That shriek that caused all of this could have come from anywhere.
‘Come on, Madeline, let’s get back in the car. We can’t stay out here.’
Mina looped the woman’s arm around her shoulder and lifted her up to her feet; a shot of pain seized her leg as she realigned her balance. Madeline was weak as a child and put up no resistance to her touch. She’d taken care of everyone for long enough; it was Mina’s turn to take the lead. With sore and tender steps she carried her to the passenger side and helped her legs inside. The yellow one watched on from the back seat, his little face the very epitome of concern.
‘There you go,’ Mina said as she stood back to take one last look around them.
Radio static fizzled on the dashboard; any sound but the wind felt hostile in that moment. There came not a single voice but many, cutting across each other, all striving to be heard. Mina limped around to the driver’s seat and sat in to listen.
‘Come in,’ a voice roared, ‘does anyone read me?’
‘We need immediate support.’
‘Are you getting the same calls we are?’ another asked.
‘Did you hear the screams? My God, what are they?’
‘Something’s happening. We have reports coming in of attacks!’
‘Who’s responsible? Is it terrorists?’
‘They won’t stop shrieking.’
‘This isn’t a terrorist attack.’
‘They’re outside,’ someone whispered, terrified. ‘We can’t hold them off.’
‘What the fuck are they?’
‘They’re inside the station. They’ve killed everyone. I can’t get—’
‘It’s all over the country. Every city. Every town.’
‘Some of them look like us.’
‘We’re not prepared for—’
‘I know these people,’ someone wept. ‘Why are they doing this?’
‘Rural areas are worst hit. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s hundreds of them. Thousands. Where did they all come from?’
‘They aren’t human!’
‘Someone, please, take care of my family. I can’t get through to—’
‘There’s nothing we can do. We’re outnumbered.’
‘They’re everywhere.’
Mina’s blood ran cold.
Whatever the watchers had been waiting for, it was finally happening. The horrifying scenario that she’d dreaded above all others – that canvas hanging forever in the back room of her mind, painted with a smeared palette of paranoia and hard fact – was now her reality. Mina clicked off the radio and stared at it, haunted by everything she’d just heard: the terror, the death, the end.
‘You can’t hear them, can you?’ Madeline said, staring off into the night, her face at half-rest.
‘Why now?’ she asked, fearfully scanning the dark outside.
‘What you heard was a war cry, Mina. The watchers are being summoned to take back what was once theirs.’
A single changeling could tear apart an entire community, and they’d risen from the earth in legions. They would spread across the lands like a low cloud of locusts, leaving nothing in their wake but blood and bone and the echo of innocent screams. Madeline’s humanity had shielded her against the call, but Mina had witnessed that blind lust for blood that must have infected the others – the savageness that that scream provoked.
This wasn’t a war. This was a massacre.
‘There has to be something we can do,’ she said.
‘We stay on the road,’ Madeline replied, groaning as she straightened herself. ‘Nowhere is safe anymore.’
‘So it’s over?’
‘So is what over, Mina?’ she asked, too weary to speak above a whisper.
She glanced back to the yellow one and then to Madeline – the last two friends she had left. ‘Everything, I guess.’
‘No.’ Madeline’s eyes closed as her lips insinuated the slightest smile. ‘It’s not over. It’s taken me many centuries to realise this, Mina, but nothing is ever hopeless in this life.’