"MAMA!"
Aria and Lila scread at the sa ti, both girls throwing themselves against Ivy’s sides on pure instinct.
The footsteps kept coming.
And then the first one stepped out of the dark
Five ters tall.
A rotting giant, arms thick as tree trunks, fingernails worn down to black blades.
It moved with the slow, absolute certainty of sothing that had never needed to hurry.
Ivy’s body was still recovering from labor three days ago.
She had no weapon.
She had no strength.
She had nothing.
She spread her arms anyway.
"Aria. Lila. Get behind . NOW."
The monster was faster.
One massive hand ca down and closed around Aria before Ivy could move.
Her daughter was yanked into the air...eight years old and suddenly weightless...her small arms thrashing, her hands reaching and reaching for soone who couldn’t reach back.
"MAMA SAVE ! I don’t want to die! MAMA! MAMA!"
Ivy ran but it did nothing.
The distance between them was absolute.
She could only watch as the creature lifted her daughter toward its open mouth.
"DON’T! Please...PLEASE don’t hurt her! ARIA! Don’t be scared! Mama’s coming! Mama’s RIGHT HERE..."
Crack.
The sound was small but that was the worst part.
Such a small sound...for sothing so enormous.
Aria went still.
"Mama..."
The voice was almost nothing. Barely breath.
"Mama...I love you."
"ARIA!"
Ivy’s scream tore out of sowhere below language.
"No...no, no, no! My baby! I’m SORRY! This is my fault! This is ALL my fault..."
She didn’t even finish the sentence before the second hand ca down.
Lila.
"Mama..."
Six years old.
Soaked through.
Her face a wreck of tears and rain and absolute terror.
"Mama, I don’t want to leave you...we still have to have birthdays together... we still have to..."
"LILA!"
Ivy’s foot slipped.
She hit the ground hard, palms scraping open on the gravel.
She threw her arm out anyway, fingers spread, reaching across a distance that ant nothing
This one didn’t kill her fast.
It held Lila up like a toy.
Like sothing amusing.
The claws went through her shoulder.
Lila’s scream split the night open.
"MAMA IT HURTS! MAMA!"
"LILA! I’m sorry! Baby, I’m SO sorry..."
Crack.
The second sound was identical to the first.
"Mama... I..."
Lila’s voice was already sowhere far away.
Her head dropped.
*****
"AH..."
Ivy made a sound she had never made before.
Sothing animal.
Sothing that had no na.
It ca from a place inside her that had not existed until this mont...and would never close again.
From behind the door, voices drifted out.
Jack...excited, delighted, like he was watching sothing entertaining:
"Did you see her FACE? They got crushed like garbage! This is AMAZING! Now it’s her turn!"
Maya, satisfied...
"Finally. Those little things were so loud. I could not stand the crying."
Adrian said nothing.
Not a single word.
Not one sound.
As if the woman he had married and the three daughters they had made together were never here.
The largest monster turned toward Ivy.
Each step sent vibrations up through the ground and into her knees.
She was already out of strength.
Nothing left to run with.
Nothing left to fight with.
She just pulled the baby tighter.
Pressed her lips to that tiny forehead.
Tears fell onto the baby’s face.
And she kept saying the sa two words over and over:
"I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m sorry..."
The baby looked up at her.
Those eyes ...clear, new, untouched by any of this looked at her like everything was going to be okay.
The giant hand ca down.
It wrapped around both of them.
Crack.
Crack.
The pain was total.
She felt her bones going, one by one.
And she spent every last second curving her body around the baby, using herself as a wall.
"Not her... please not her... she’s so small... she doesn’t understand ANY of this... please... PLEASE..."
The monsters didn’t understand please
The smallest one.
The last one.
The one who had never gotten to say a single word.
Gone.
In the last seconds, Ivy’s mind went sowhere quieter.
She saw Aria helping with the dishes .... not even asked, just doing it.
Aria with both small hands on Ivy’s shoulders after a long day, pressing down like she’d seen adults do.
I’m going to protect you, Mama.
She saw Lila crawling into her lap at midnight, demanding another story.
Drawing pictures of the two of them that looked nothing like either of them and were the most beautiful things Ivy had ever seen.
Mama is the prettiest person in the whole world.
She saw the baby.
No words.
Just eyes.
Just that small, specific weight in her arms...
...that had only existed for three days and had already beco sothing she could not imagine living without.
"God..."
Her voice was almost gone.
Almost nothing.
"Please... give one more chance..."
"I SWEAR it. I swear to you... I will make them PAY for this..."
"PLS... I’M BEGGING..."
Then darkness.
****
"Ivy! I am TALKING to you! Are you spacing out AGAIN?"
A voice, familiar and cold belonging to a male.
Grating in a way that went straight to the back of her teeth.
Ivy’s eyes snapped open.
The light hit her like sothing physical.
She flinched, pupils shrinking hard as the world ca in fragnts.
Orange warmth.
The buzz of voices.
A man’s mouth moving.
Words she couldn’t quite catch yet.
A thought flashed through Ivy’s mind.
Where was this?
Was she dead?
Was this inside it?
Was this hell...or the other thing?
Then she felt it.
Her hands had moved on their own.
Searching for sothing to steady herself and what they found stopped everything.
A stomach, rounded and taut.
Unmistakably pregnant.
She went completely still.
Beneath her palm...sothing moved.
Small, deliberate and alive.
The room finished coming into focus.
Warm orange light.
The beige couch she had fallen asleep on a hundred tis.
The family photos on the wall...her own face smiling back at her, Aria on one side, Lila on the other, all three caught mid-laugh.
This was her house.
Her living room.
The place she had been thrown out of and in front of her...
That face.
Painted with impatience.
Mouth still moving.
The mont she saw Adrian, her stomach turned completely over.
This man.
He had stood at that door and said nothing while her daughters died.
He had listened to their screaming and done nothing.
He had stood in the sa house as Jack’s laughter...
...and let it happen.
She stared at his mouth and watched it continue to move.
And the mory hit her so precisely it felt like a key turning in a lock.
She knew exactly what he was about to say.
Her lips moved without permission.
Barely a whisper.
The words ca out half a second before his did...
"Ivy, you need to put this house in my na. It’s dangerous out there. Only a man can protect this family."
"Ivy, you need to put this house in my na. It’s dangerous out there. Only a man can protect this family."
Their voices overlapped perfectly.
Word for word. Not a syllable off.
The silence after was enormous.
Ivy’s heart...frozen since she opened her eyes slamd back to life.
It was real.
God had heard her.
That last broken prayer, scread into the dark with nothing left to lose.
They had actually heard it.
She was back.
Fifteen days before the end of everything.
Before the virus.
Before those sounds she would never stop hearing.
Which ant...
ARIA.
LILA.
Were they here?
In the house right now? Alive?
She had to find them, hold them and tell them nothing would ever touch them again.
That this ti would be different.
That she would burn the whole world down before she let history repeat itself.
She was already pushing herself off the couch...when sothing stopped her cold.
A voice inside her head.
Not her own. It was clear, flat and electronic.
Like a notification from a system she had never signed up for.
Ding!
{Hello, Host. Welco back.}
Ivy froze.
Every muscle locked.
WHAT?
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