The wind roared through the rising sun as the last ember dies. You've made it through another night.
You rise from the bushes and toss the rifle in the burned out car, crawling into the backseat behind it to curl up for the morning. You're so hungry, but the hunt can wait. After all, there could be stragglers.
Slumber weighs on you, and the air begins to sizzle as the glaring sun beats down on the overpass. Something crashes beneath you, rattling your bones as your hands dig into the fabric of the seat. A great mass knocks into the road from below, cracking the asphalt and sliding the car just an inch towards the edge.
Do you grab your gun and fight? Do you pull your ragged blanket up and wait for the thing to pass? Your fingers graze the rifle stock as a pair of massive eyes pop out from beneath the overpass and bend backward on their stalks, gazing around the highway and passing right over your ruined shelter. Your eyes meet for just a second, but it doesn't seem to notice you.
Does it?
After a moment, the creature crawls out from beneath the overpass and begins to unfold itself to a mountainous height. It takes so long your mind is screaming out in agony for it to finish, for it to turn and smash you into bits so you do not have to wait and see if it knows, if it smells your fear as you wallow in the soiled cushions of the car you once drove to your own wedding.
But it doesn't attack.
It towers above you, swaying in the high winds for a moment like a skyscraper covered in mottled, bruised arms of sinew and shattered glass. It screams into the sky like a hurricane blast, ripping apart the peaceful morning and nearly deafening you as it begins to walk away, massive steps smashing into the earth and vibrating in your very skull. You can only watch as it lumbers away, impossibly huge, impossibly hungry, impossible to kill, already the king of your damaged world. It reaches the horizon, still taller than you can imagine, and begins to clamber over a distant mountain.
Just before it disappears on the other side, one eye flips back around the crest, and it meets yours one last time.
It winks.
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