The First Moment
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Chapter 19: Backward
We stumbled into our dome and stopped. Hank and the trio lay in pieces. Blood covered the whole center. The pair that had dug the hole had body parts strewn around it. Pieces of something lay with black viscous fluid around the middle. Scattered around the sand lay twitching little animals of the herd, maybe twenty or thirty of them.
Sasha motioned for us to stay in the tunnel entrance while he crept into the dome. He shuffled between two twitching half parts of the rabbit-like things, and touched a tattooed arm with his left big toe. The female soldier. His friend and maybe something more.
His left hand clenched then unclenched, and he moved deeper towards the center. He avoided the blood until he couldn’t, then he pushed through it. His feet and lower legs turned red. Did that mean that the blood soaked through the nano-sized barrier, or what?
He stalked around the center and paused at each tattooed body part. Each time, he would clench and unclench his fist.
Shivam held Nate and cried. Morgan and Alice wrapped their arms around me. We stood at the tunnel entrance as if an invisible door stopped us. I couldn’t smell the blood, not with my nose, but I could taste the copper and iron in the air. It left a sour, horrible taste.
Alice said, “Fuck, Hank had a child and an ex-wife who he still loved. Jesus, what the hell happened?”
Morgan’s wet cheeks pressed against my shoulder as she whispered, “We’re all going to die.”
Sasha shuffled back towards us, his eyes lowered, his muscles clenched. He wore a scowl.
“That sucks. Cool that the Rabbits keep moving even in death,” the black thing said from behind us. We all spun around. I instinctively moved Morgan behind me. I tried with Alice, but she stepped in front of me with her fists raised.
“Fuck off,” Lanka yelled and stepped to hit the black thing, but it contracted that part of itself and moved away from us, so fast, we would need to run after it to keep up. Lanka took a step to do so when Morgan rushed forward, stopped her, and held onto her as if Lanka’s life depended on it, which it may have.
Lanka cried and swung at the black thing. “Fucking fight me, you fucking loser. FIGHT ME!”
Morgan pulled Lanka’s head down on her shoulder, and Lanka wrapped her arms around Morgan. Lanka’s pale skin shone in the dim light against Morgan’s dark mocha skin. Complete opposites in every way, except in the way that matters. Both human. Friends.
“Monkeys, stupid monkeys,” it said as it disappeared down the tunnel. I couldn’t hear it move, but I could hear a distant slurp of the Ooze.
“Did it just call us slugs?” Morgan asked as she watched it leave and patted Lanka’s head like a dog. Lanka noticed, stood up, smiled, and punched Morgan in the shoulder.
“Sea cucumbers,” Nate said. Of course, we would all hear something slightly different based on what the thing meant. Amazing that we all heard something different. Such technology, and they use it for this.
Sasha had diverted from returning directly and moved to the hole. The ones in the middle had their body parts separated, but these two lay on their backs, legs still in the hole, with deep claw marks in their bodies. So deep that their ribs splayed out, blood coated the ground and walls around them, and the stargazer’s hand lay a foot away from her body.
I said, “Rats.” Because it suddenly hit me.
“What the fuck?” Alice said and stared at me.
“We are like those lab rats that scientists use to test behavior theory, you know, rats in a maze,” I said and gestured to the walls around us.
“We’re all just rats in a maze,” Nate sang, more shouted. Shivam smiled and hugged him.
“We keep moving,” Sasha said as he joined us. He didn’t comment on Nate’s horrible singing voice, nor why Nate pretended to play air guitar. He just shuffled past us as we glanced at each other, and Shivam stopped Nate’s playing.
“But don’t we want to find out what happened?” Shivam asked and gestured to the piles of body parts and blood.
“Fuck no, we need to leave,” Alice said and grabbed Shivam’s hand to pull him deeper into the tunnel.
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