The Mortal Burden
Book II
Chapter 4
Part XVIII: Predator or Predator
Torrents of polluted rain bombard the barren landscape, marred by crumbling craters of fused soil; the silica melted into jagged obsidian molten rock. Old cracked bone, scattered over the wasteland.
Huge gouges are cut deep into the earth, being eroded by the scathing tongue of the wind.
Large pools of greenish water collect in bombshell craters and ravines cut deep into the bedrock. This land had been scorched of life hundreds of years prior, it has never recovered; yet, small patches of scraggly grass, gnarled trees, and mutated shrubs hungrily soak up the foul sustenance that would perhaps eventually lead the land into the forest majesty that it once was.
It was night and most of this detail was lost to Clayden, but May with her heightened vision could easily see, so she led the way. She was still in her dress from the party, as they sheltered beneath a gargantuan fallen oak. The tree bark fossilizing in the arid landscape, but its insides rotten with decay and disease.
Earth’s weather has never been the same since the arrival of the Titans; the use of thermonuclear weapons was thought of as the only sure way of destroying the alien behemoths.
The “Titanomachy”, the day of the planetfall, more humans had died in the first month from radiation poisoning and fallout than in actual assaults by the Titans. Places that were once deserts became thick sickly poisonous forests, while forests turned into vast wastelands. The nuclear blasts and fallout dimmed the light of the sun for a generation allowing the ice caps on the poles to start advancing, the earth was slowly going into another ice age. The vast ice sheets will eventually scrape the surface clean. Humanity might be able to survive a slow-moving ice sheet, but that was the least of their worries.
May and Clayden have been out of the city for about two weeks, exclusively traveling at night, occasionally stopping at nearby settlements to pick up supplies, eat, and rest.
“I hope the rain lets up soon, there’s an underground system of human settlements that we can shelter in once we reach that mountain range,” May tells Clayden as he shivers, the cold dampness reaches into his body to squelch out his warmth. May unaffected by the damp cold stands up straight, the rain slicking her dress against her pale cold skin. Nipples erect with slender proportioned curves outlining her gaunt form. She hasn’t fed for a week, her body has almost fully absorbed the blood, her fuel, from her last victim.
“I should be able to take us through the range, but it will be more dangerous. If I’m correct a large community of my kind exists within the cavern system.”
“That’s comforting,” he laughs, he nudges her side jokingly. She looks down on him as a predator might look at prey, her eyes drilling into his like a cold torch. Clayden pulls back, his mood going grim at her reaction. A wolf howls over the rain, soon it is joined by many others, approaching from the east.
“We’re being followed,” May thrusts up, picking up her gear; Clayden follows quickly, slinging his bag on his back and clutching an ancient prototype Lancer-Rifle he purchased a couple settlements ago. The Lancer-Rifle was heavy, it didn’t have the stopping power the new ones had, and sometimes the lance mode would not work, but it made him feel safer and more in control of the situation being armed. The metal, partly covered in a composite material, was brilliantly etched, the sigils of a noble house forgotten long ago at the start of the war; heraldry of various types of monsters killed brilliantly laid out on the stock. The last thing he wanted was to be a burden to a woman who could kill him instantly.
Rain sloshed down now in thick, nearly fluorescent green waves, winds roared, gusting heavily from the west. The howling had stopped as the storm’s intensity increased. Debris spun in tiny vortexes, created by the hypocritical crosswinds, tearing scraggly vegetation from the ground.
“I think the storm will lose our scent and tracks, but if they’re smart they’ll catch onto where we went in a day or so,” he yelled to May as they trudged forward into the opposition of an angry sky.
“We should reach the entrance to the underground soon!” The vampire replies as she leads, walking confidently as Clayden keeps up behind her.
Written ~ 1997. © Jacob A. Pickard 2025. All rights reserved. This work is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, republished, excerpted, or used for academic, commercial, or derivative purposes without written permission.
Ecoheretic 