The blue door with streaks of silver metal appeared sturdy. But will it prove study enough? With no choice, it will have to as two dark shadows at the far end of the connecting ally move across my peripheral vision. I push away a small pile of rotting garbage, black flies, and the stink of rotting meat overpower the urine-overlayed scat smell that has followed me down the long alley. With a metallic creak, the door opens while the dark shadows cross the alleyway entrance.

‘What’s the plan to get out of this?’ I wonder as I slip through the heavy, thankfully, unlocked door and into an old theater. One of many abandoned after the event.

Pausing, I glance at the thick metal door, ‘Do I hide, barricade, or both?’ Barricading takes time and may not even slow them down. Hiding may work, has worked, but where? I close the metal door, lock the deadbolt, and peer around for someplace, anyplace to hide.

To my left, red, faded, cloth rows of seats flank two aisleways leading to empty black doors. To my right, a thick red curtain, torn with age, partially obscures large, cartoon-painted houses and tree facades. The wooden stage, cracked and worn barren in places, offers no cover. Above me, an old-style, cable-held, metal, walkway crosses the theatre stage and extends like a ‘T’ over the seating area. Two grease-stained skylights allow the bright sunlight of the waning day to enter. I can hide or even escape up there.

I locate the dubious ladder to safety. The rungs have dust and rust covering them. The bolts holding it to the wall have come loose, and some hang partially out. Do I trust the ladder? A massive crash from outside in the alley removes my choice.

I climb slowly, not trusting each rung. My body screams to rush, but my rational mind holds firm. Better slow than to collapse this metal monstrosity. With each placement of my hand, I pause, gently shift my weight, and pray the ladder holds. Halfway up, I stop, catch my breath, and slow my heart rate. The spacing and alignment of the seats help to bring my mind back from today’s world and remind me that order can and does exist. I just need to stay on the chosen course, and everything will turn out ok.

I make it to the top and slide onto the metal, grated walkway, causing dust to sparkle in the faint sunlight. My fingers trace patterns in the chalky dust like I used to as a child in my grandfather’s attic while we played hide and seek. I always won, which meant the first pick of ice cream, popcorn, and a Disney movie cuddled with my two younger siblings between Grandpa and Grandma.

The rusted cabled walkway gives me pause. Will it hold my emancipated body? Small footprints of mice or rats cover the criss-crossed grating. I lie flat on my belly to better distribute my weight as the dust tickles my nose, and I attempt to avoid inhaling the foul substance. It smells of old smoke and droppings. I suppress my sneeze, remembering my allergies that used to consume my world, all but forgotten in the new world.

I inch forward onto the walkway as it groans, sways, and small pings of stressed metal ricochet around the cavernous room. My body freezes. My heart rate pounds in my ears while my fingers grip the metal grating floor. Slowly, shifting a single muscle at a time, I move my leg backward. I need to find a better hiding place.

The crash of the door’s removal means I have no choice now. Sweat erupts from my forehead, sliding down my cheek, tasting of salt, metal, and dirt. I tense my body and force my breath through my nose to slow my heart rate. The dust almost causes me to sneeze, but I flex every muscle in my face to hold it in. The walkway sways but stays quiet.

The massive dark shadows stomp onto the stage, their footfalls echoing around the small theatre, causing scurrying sounds to erupt. Huge, dark, strangely jointed arms throw fake trees and house facades around the stage. The dark, hunched shapes jump at the small shapes, catching a few. Squeals before crunching replace the smashing until everything falls quiet, except my thumping heart.

I breathe hard, thanking everything holy that these things can’t hear. I pray to all the different Gods I know, that they will leave soon.

I lay motionless as they stalk the stage like past echoes of actors I never bothered to enjoy, then move down to destroy the order of the red seats. Why do they always come in pairs? ‘Who cares,’ part of me answers, ‘just stay still.’ But my scientific mind continues. I have never gotten so close, and I want to figure out the what, how, and why of them.

Through slitted eyes, I study their movements. Like a pair of dancers, they move in sync and appear graceful in their brutality. While chairs sail through the air, they dance together, and the two black shapes flow as water. With only the sunlight from the empty doorway and skylights to brighten the place, I can not make out any distinct features. Their bodies absorb light and appear partially furry, fuzzy, or even scaly, but they have a humanoid shape and stand twice the size of a large human.

I settle my head on my forearms and begin to wait them out. I have never watched the clock, I always did what it did, and kept moving forward. Now, as time stretches forward, and my future appears short, I find myself wanting to stare at a clock and grow bored.

The first pairing I witnessed from my apartment appeared bear-like, but they moved like four-legged octopuses, flowing across the street to the apartment building across from me. Screams erupted from the building, while I hid in my apartment, under a blanket, staring at the empty doorway where they entered. Minutes later, they emerged and flowed away down the street.

At that moment, all my plans, savings, and diligence meant nothing. My future flipped from retirement in two years to hoping to survive for the next two hours. That night, while my neighbors ran away, I raided their homes for food, filled the bathtub with water, barricaded the door, and built a secret escape route out of the fire escape. I have always lived in the future, rushing to get things done, but now I find myself having time to contemplate the past, not to change it, but to retreat to it.

The second pairing arrived on the street the next morning and confronted a small group of military men. The black pair, fuzzy even under the then-working street lights, moved as graceful shadows toward the green-dressed men with black guns erupting fire from their nozzles. The bullets sprayed the things, yet they still moved. An explosion erupted beside the black pair, yet they didn’t react. They flowed over the men, arms, legs, blood, and screams silenced the guns. The pair remained in the gore briefly until they turned toward my apartment building. I grabbed my bug-out bag and inched toward my escape window. A series of gunshots echoed around the street, but the pair didn’t react until the bullets finally struck them. With the speed of a truck, they disappeared toward the location of the firing.

While the internet remained, I read everything I could on them. Searching for weakness, searching for a way to live. No one knew of any weaknesses, but everyone had a theory. The most prevalent theory had Aliens eradicating humanity. My favorite theory had the earth fighting humans with the black things, like how our body fights off disease with special cells. The most outlandish had the government, a different one for each region of the world, creating super soldiers that they couldn’t control, or could and wanted this.

The pair below slow their movements and pause with small twitches in the middle of the destruction of the red seats. They flow like thick, black oil onto the stage and grow still. My mind soars in opposition to their stillness, will they leave soon? I close my eyes, again praying to whichever deity still watches our world.

Suddenly, a twang rings out, and the walkway jerks. I must have fallen asleep.

They don’t react, two bundles of black connected by thick black tentacle-like arms, acting out the most boring, yet horrific, show in this theatre’s history.

The sun has set with only the faint moonlight illuminating the stage and the dark heaps of shadow below me. They do not glisten like oil, instead, they absorb the light, and I have trouble determining their exact outline.

Now I have a chance, but will the walkway hold a little longer? I shift to my elbows and knees, a single muscle at a time. I stare into the almost complete blackness. I know the walkway only by touch, not sight.

Episode 3) Crawl the walkway, hope the door at the end does not have a lock, and hope it leads someplace safe.

I cannot retreat down the ladder. It may not hold me for another trip, and they will likely sense me somehow and wake up. I do attempt to figure out a path, but every path leads to my body getting ripped apart.

While option three appears at first glance to have the most hope and give me the most control over my future, the risks far outweigh the potential benefits. What if the walkway breaks? What if I can’t open the door? But what if it doesn’t break and I can open it? My decision means death or life. I can’t make a stupid one. Better to stay put and wait them out, hopefully not long, besides, I can always use the walkway later.

In the stillness, my mind wanders back to all the internet conjectures about these things. Aliens, the most likely. But from where? They emerged from the oceans at night in Europe and Africa, then each coast as the light disappeared. Conventional weapons meant nothing to them, even large explosions didn’t matter much. The use of missiles, nuclear and conventional, followed the invaders as they moved inland, both the missiles and the monsters killing us humans as they went. They didn’t get everyone, and many survived behind their jagged line of advance. Hiding worked best. So I hid.

I must have fallen asleep, as my stomach growls woke me—two days since I had eaten anything of substance. Food fills shelves of all the stores and many empty apartments, but those things have not moved away from our city yet. The issue with hiding, you still need to eat, drink, and defecate. When my food and water disappeared, I ventured out into the fresh air. Using my escape route for the first time, I snuck down and kept to the shadows, avoiding the noises of destruction and gunfire.

I wanted a new hiding place, an abandoned store with food and water. I stayed in the alleyways, avoiding the wide open streets, both for the monsters from the oceans and the monsters of desperate people.

On my first night out, I slept in a metal garbage bin filled with rotten food and garbage. I dreamed of sweet cakes and my last visit with my parents. My dream about asking for more gravy over a special dinner with my parents and my two elementary teachers shattered into panicked pieces with gunfire from the street. I stayed still in the metal can as the gunfire, roaring truck engines, screams, and explosions slowly disappeared.

I spilled out of the garbage, my stomach tight with hunger, my nose rejoicing at the city air, and slinked in the opposite direction of the faint noises. Each corner, each street, I crouched low and spent time scrutinizing the surroundings, planning my route, my fallback route, and possible issues. When I had a firm plan, I sprinted, crawled, and walked to the next alley.