Escape

This was to be the prologue to something I got about four pages into.. again in my teenage years. This, however, I may very well fix up and finish some day, so the first few pages of the real story must remain hidden. .. Of course, it will need a LOT of work.

Somewhere, I'm sure, there must be something I wrote as a teenager that starts off in a more pleasant way. But who needs happy stories when you're fifteen?

Escape

Dark clouds raged endlessly over the night sky, the evening moon and stars dimmed and soon hidden by the onslaught of ominous thunderheads racing across the heavens. With them came the rumbling and crashing of thunder, and behind that, a darker noise. It grew steadily, seeming to follow the clouds, the pounding and rushing and clanging creeping and then outright sprinting toward the quiet village. As it grew closer the sounds switched, becoming the banging and cracking and screeching of metal and horrid cries that were not quite human in sound, and after that the pounding of feet and the crackling of fire from torches carried high and battered by the wind.

Swathes of fire spread across the outermost fields and buildings, burning with a nameless passion, turning night into a new day with its light as the hordes of creatures came upon the community. Tongues of flame licked hungrily at the wooden houses, reducing boards to mere ashes as the creatures rushed ahead, howling. Screams of the villagers joined the racket, each indistinguishable from the others as men and women tore out of their homes. Crying children and mewling babes were dragged along behind fathers or carried in the arms of mothers or older siblings, desperate to escape the unknown terror that attacked, the shadows with clubs and swords and nameless weapons who chased as the frightened citizens fled in terror. Too many were cut down as they ran, bodies trampled underfoot as the ghastly beings flung themselves at the buildings and people which the fire passed by, leaving nothing standing behind as they hurdled on.

Those who escaped disappeared screaming into the woods outside the village, no safer among the looming trees and thick underbrush than in the clearing where they left the unknown terror behind. Scattered as they were, families separated, children missing parents and wives missing husbands, not one was any safer as the beasts pressed on and the noise sounded ceaselessly behind them. Eventually the din lessened, fading off into the distance as the inhuman raiders finished their job, leaving only the remnants of the fire to burn and crackle and pop behind them, nothing left living within what had once been a peaceful village, nothing now remaining erect except for the occasional board rising from the ashes, not quite ready to claim defeat.

As the few who managed to escape cautiously returned to the edge of the woods, peering from behind the trees toward the smoldering ruins, the clouds above finally broke open. As they watched, the last remaining flames were doused by the sudden downpour. Raindrops pounded relentlessly on the bare ground, leaving the onetime village to remain as no more than cold mud among the charred remains. As the shower grew too heavy to see through, those still left turned toward the relative dryness beneath the trees, leaving their old lives behind forever.