Young Writers Society

Tidal waves of sand rammed themselves against the concrete wall. The wall held the city in a secure embrace, shielding it from the endless stretch of gray that swallowed the horizon and reached silently into the sky. The fingers of the Gris Desert were long and sharp as blades, and collars were drawn up in order to battle the slithering cold.

Kim Visis ran his eyes over the faint horizon that was a swirling mixture of blue and gray. He was waiting, as all others around him were waiting, for the night, when the winds would begin their howling and the land would be covered with the green firelights hovering where they had died. Tapping against the silver chip inside his ear, he shifted where he sat on the barricade.

He nearly flinched when a soft buzz sounded in his ear, ringing like a small bug, and immediately covered his mouth with a hand. “This is General Visis, reporting from the Green Zone, do you copy, this is General Visis, reporting from the Green Zone, do you copy, this is…” Kim paused, took a deep breath, waited for a moment longer, then lowered his hand back to his side and sighed. As he had anticipated, the buzz faded away as quickly as it had come.

There had been no contact from the military headquarters for over two days. Kim hadn’t said a word to the soldiers, yet he could see them visibly getting nervous at the lack of commands from the government. Frowning to himself, Kim brushed back his dark hair and exhaled into the winds. When sand brushed against his nose threateningly, he shrunk back behind the barricade.

Twenty-five years. For nearly two decades, Kim had been sitting behind the concrete barricade, and once every day he watched the Gris for the forthcoming night. And he didn’t know how many times his lips had moved to spurt out quietly, This is General Visis, reporting form the Green Zone, do you copy, do you copy, do you copy. Although he knew that it was impossible to deny the tendrils of nervousness that were seeping into him by each second that passed, he didn’t attempt to go back into the city. There was only one Lieutenant General and nothing more than a hundred soldiers —what was left of the Corps that had once been under his command—. He couldn’t leave his post. Not especially in the time that he lived in, now that the soldiers saw how much of a suicide that the Green Zone was and considered it a death curse.

It was inevitable that the thought of what he was awaiting seeped into Kim’s mind. It had always been there, stabbing into his brain, tugging at his neck.

The Parasites—they swarmed to the Green Zone every night. And before they had begun to claw at the city’s walls, there were the White Beasts, looking nothing but identical to the Parasites. If only they had died out when the time had been correct—if only the humans had remained still inside the city walls. The White Beasts had roamed the Gris hundreds of years ago, occasionally driving themselves against the city with abnormal strength and animalistic nature. The humans accepted no threats, and not before too long there were only a few of the pale-skinned beasts remaining. As most wounded animals did, day by day, they began to draw back into the depths of the Gris.

Yet, the God hadn’t seen the dangers within the city walls. Humans had heightened their longing and standard for beauty. For all faces within the city walls had black hair on their brown heads, dotted with long, narrow gray eyes, they longed for something pale, something white, something shiny, something to be admired. People with coins in their hands bleached their hair and skin, while the surgery was unavailable to most. The city was simply too massive, the longing too much.

It was when people began to skin. The ragged men and women took corpses with lighter skin, or so they thought, from Burying Centers and skinned them. As if the skins were shining clothes, they ran to equally ragged doctors who had been driven away from the center of the city. There was pay, and where there were coins shining, the white-clad ravens also raced.

The corpses never lasted long. Since the bodies had two legs, two arms and a head with black hair, there were relatives and lovers screaming and protesting every place that the skinners went. At the same time as the skinning came to a slow, hesitant stop, a White Beast’s body was dragged into the city. Dirty hands of the poor immediately stamped fingerprints all over it, and its skin was soon gone and on another’s body as a new dress that did not quite fit.

There were piles upon piles of dead White Beasts that were empty of care and attention. No heads were turned as the pale bodies disappeared, one by one. Yet, neither the doctors or the skinners had thought that the dress would eat away at them. The White Beast sank into the skinners, muscles melted to reform, and bones lengthened to become stronger and thicker. When howls of beasts began to resonate from mouths that dripped with the blood of white ravens, the only sure thing was that the skinners now had the perfect appearance of a White Beast.

Those who were eaten away their thoughts and beings were renamed the Parasites.

The humans of the city soon drove out the Parasites into the Gris Desert, where they joined with their sires. From the depths of the gray sand dunes, numbers of White Beasts resurfaced. As it had been hundreds of years before, pale beasts once again swarmed the city walls. The God sent out a Lieutenant General and a Corps under his command, eighty-thousand soldiers with their fingers crafted into guns and ready to throw themselves into a pit of fire at command.

Eighty-thousand men.

Feeling something twist, wither and die inside him, snakes biting onto each other’s throats and strangling within themselves, Kim lifted his eyelids that had slipped closed. His eyes were cold, his lungs also freezing. Beneath his gray and black uniform, his muscles began to awake from its long sleep. Gritting his teeth, Kim reached behind him roughly and choked his greasy hair into a short ponytail. After giving the chip in his ear a last tap of longing, he shot up from where he sat. The winds were beginning to pick up, and it was as if the Gris was roaring and coming alive on four feet. Storms of sand billowed up everywhere that Kim could see, and the smell of concrete and dusty sand swallowed the world. It was night.

Kim hurled himself off of the barricade. With years and years of memories overlapping within himself and in his eyes, he didn’t need a glance back to see the green fireflies swarming close to the fire of the city. His feet rolled off of the sand-covered ground, and he raced to where his vision would be the most open.

It was silent except for two hundred feet stomping the barricade in hurry. The winds carried sharp sand particles into every pore of the men’s bodies. The sky was a perfect storm, raging and ripping apart the sand dunes, its actions akin to a gigantic beast. Despite how Kim had tied his hair away from his face, long strands escaped the bond, freed by the invisible fingers floating freely in the air. Footsteps added up to make his blood boil, yet it made his head go cold at the same time. The silence was too much, and now that his eyes took in the sight of the numerous green eyes that glinted in the dark, his heart was wailing with the sky.

He took a last glance at the city’s walls, faced the green fire and spat out everything inside him in a tangle of desperation and the cold sand of the desert. “Align!” he could only hear himself scream. To him, it rang in such a loud and destroying manner that he couldn’t feel himself think.

His lips were beginning to close when the Parasites arrived, and it was a mesmerizing sea of white and green gems, like skeletal panthers prancing in the night. The Gris howled in welcome. White hair was swirling around every parasite, blending with their pale bodies. Each jump that a Parasite’s long legs produced burst forth as if it was a roar that had been suppressed for centuries. The grace and beauty that each one of them held was a basin of water that only had slight ripples, illuminated by a blue moon.

Kim shot a hand forward. The ends of his fingertips wobbled and parted to show four black points that were each a weapon sobbing blood. Only his thumb remained unchanged, yet it couldn’t stop itself from shivering in pain that Kim knew he was used to. His head was null, and it was only his body that trembled for rest. He grabbed the arm that had thin black guns for fingers, and pulled his thumb to his palm for a split second that he anticipated to last forever but in reality, didn’t.

The Parasite didn’t fall. It kept bounding forward with the rest of its kin, still white as bones and rippling with something cold and silent that brought awe to the brim of Kim’s lips. Yet he narrowed his eyes and kept firing the bullets from his skin. For a moment, all his world held was himself, then he heard the screaming of the soldiers as the Parasites reached the barricade, as they always did.

The silver chip in his ear buzzed. “This is General Visis, reporting from the Green Zone, do you copy, this—“ Kim rasped, sand pouring into his lungs. He choked and nearly tore at his throat, yet managed to keep firing the guns. At the same time as he spoke, a faint voice overlapped him.

‘Visis? Kim Visis?’

It took a moment for Kim to recognize the voice, and when he did, he was wrestling off a Parasite and driving bullets into its neck until its head was separated from the body. He took a cold glance around. The Green Zone was turing white. “Del… Del?”

‘Visis, I have no time.’

“Del, inform me—”

‘The city is emptying. There will be nothing, …abandoned…’ The voice began to fade away, and Kim latched onto it in desperation that boiled inside him as a volcano that would never erupt, frozen cold. And the icy poison traveled down his body, paralyzing his heart.

“What do you mean?” he now couldn’t recognize his own voice. “Del! Del! Answer me!”

There was no sound that continued from the silver chip.

Kim realized that his breathing was beginning to jump up in pace. He grabbed at his neck, face, hair, and then he kept fighting. He kept whispering to himself nonsense, his lips moving without consent, something taking over him, moving him. And what he felt was a feeling of such utmost betrayal and loneliness, so empty that he nearly ripped out his heart and brain. It formed a tight coil inside his ribcage and laughed at him with cruel rejoice. Everything was being stitched together painfully in his mind, forming a monster that had no eyes or limbs.

He could only glance up when the familiar ripple of air found him through the raging winds. Kim saw the slim, silver thing in the sky, an aircraft from the military, followed by three more. “Sir!” a voice yelled beside Kim. “Sir! In the sky, sir!”

“I,” Kim managed before the first bomb fell. The small, dark shape landed amongst the Parasites, and bodies flew into the air, before the white explosion was sucked into itself and left nothing but gray sand. It was as if the desert had gained rage. Roaring in anger, it slammed countless fists down onto the ground and snapped its fangs together in the air. The Parasites screamed with the Gris and pushed forth with the same cold anger that they always held in their eyes.

Kim’s eyes dulled, focused, and narrowed when they saw the second bomb. Backing up from the tangled mass of white and brown bodies, he quickly studied the shape of the bomb that was making a graceful, forlorn descent, and it was painfully akin to one of a dead bird. His head spun, stumbled, then he realized how close the bomb was to where he stood, where all of the other soldiers were fighting. He imagined that his eyes were as pale as the Parasites’, for a short, simple moment.

And perhaps he might have sobbed in blank disbelief, feeling all the strength drain out of his arms and legs. “To the bunker!” he howled somehow, the wild sound ripping its way through his throat. “Soldiers, to the—“

The bomb struck, and Kim crumpled onto the ground. Breathing as if he was dying, he scrambled onto his knees yet fell again. He whipped his head up, yet the song of the desert was too strong, and it had swallowed his words. “To the bunker! To the bunker! Listen to me!”

Yet again, the winds laughed, jeered and greedily took away the syllables before they could reach a single soul.

He scrambled for the chip in his ear, struggling to recall what he had been taught a long time before. “Command, code… Code four, seven, zero, seven, Lieutenant General Kim Visis in command, respond…” Soon after, a familiar ripple of vibration swept through his brain. He aimed his guns at the Parasites, fired, rolled, punched, dodged. As he did, he forced his lips to form the words, bunker, and run. When the soldiers, one by one, shook off the Parasites that they were fighting and raced to the direction of the bunker, Kim closed his eyes in relief. Then the third bomb fell, rocking the ground with gigantic roars. He fell onto his knees and felt his bones shake with the concrete and sand.

Each of his breaths still held disbelief, and also something deeper that had only peeked out of its pit after forty-six years of being frozen. He pressed down upon it again, cursing, crying, panting, blinking with pain. And he grabbed the handles of his machetes, drew them out, and ran in the opposite direction of his soldiers.

He met the Parasites without any bullets in his assault. All pain and heat faded away, and for a moment he imagined that what he felt was the Gris, the enormous gray desert making itself known to him before it took his life away. The machetes’ handles were getting slippery despite the leather. His fingers turned pale and lost feeling fast. As he twisted his body, spun, jumped and yelled hoarsely, a sense of something painful yet undeniably final settled into him.

Something else dropped out of the silver aircraft. Blinking away the blood in his eyes, Kim frowned and glanced up. The thing that was falling, he realized with his mouth dropping open slightly, was something that would dissolve, destroy, devour, and take away what was supposed to be there. His body began to shake, and he only faintly realized that a Parasite had sunken its teeth into his shoulder. And he laughed, sobbed, laughed.

Breeze-like laughs escaping through his teeth, he turned around, stumbling, and made an empty lunge for the bunker. His machetes fell from his sweaty fingers and a hand grabbed at his hair.

When the explosion tore through the ground, Kim Visis closed his eyes.