1987- Chapter One

The moment everything changed, I was on a plane to Telluride, Colorado, I was planning to visit my grandparents for the first time since I had moved away for college. The sheer panic of everyone that day is something I'll never forget, that along with the haunting last words from our pilot as we passed over trees and prepared to land.

"Enjoy this sunset folks, it may be the last one we ever see."

At the time, no one knew what was happening, but from the countless fatalities on the news and the huge dark cloud that seemed to continue growing in the sky, we knew it couldn't be good. Some of the passengers on board had pleaded with the flight members, begging them not to let the plane land, but others, like me, we knew that we couldn't fly far away to escape this. We had little fuel and there were no reasons to believe that anywhere was safe. We were going to die no matter where we landed. At that point, the only thing I truly wanted was a quick death, I know that seems very pessimistic, but I always was one to see the cup as being half empty. Needless to say, I never did make it to my grandparent's house.

We did, however, make it to the runway in Telluride, we hit the ground hard, the smoke and the grey sky made it difficult to judge how far away we were from touchdown. Everyone on that plane survived, well, they survived the landing, but that was nothing compared to the horrors of what lay outside the airplane doors. As soon as the wheels hit the floor there was a horrible noise, like the sound of someone dragging their nails down a chalkboard... but a thousand times worse. Something was clawing at the sides of the plane. I didn't know what to do, my first thought was to run, but in all honestly, I just wanted to curl up into a ball and hide underneath the seats. Apparently, the fight or flight response went off in everyone's minds as soon as we reached a stop.
The doors were forced open, and people practically threw themselves down the stairs trying to make it inside the airport. It was a stampede and unfortunately, as a frail nineteen-year-old girl, I was tossed aside and shoved back down into my seat when I tried to get up. If it weren't for the hysterical assholes who only cared about protecting themselves, I wouldn't be alive. See, what they didn't know, is that the creatures were attracted to chaos. Perhaps, they simply heard the screams and the loud crash or maybe they could sense fear, I didn't know at the time, all I knew was that within minutes everyone who had left the plane were sprawled out on the ground, pieces of them torn to shreds like something had mutilated them. They were so fast that by the time the screams stopped, and I looked out of the window, they had gone.
It was surreal, you read about things like this, you read about them in sci-fi novels and comic books. It never occurs to you that something like this could actually happen.

The exit doors were frantically shut as soon as the massacre occurred, the people still left inside too afraid to speak, too terrified to even breathe. The next five minutes were the tensest moments of my entire life. It was worse than death, we were left waiting to die in a gruesome and painful manner. But after the next twenty minutes passed and nothing happened, people became more comfortable. By comfortable, I mean that they weren't as afraid to cry and chatter amongst themselves in terror. I think I was in shock; I don't really remember how I felt, all I remember is the sight of a young, grieving woman. I know it seems like a selfish thing to say, but I was glad I was alone, glad I had no one to lose with me. The woman was a mother of two, her children were small, twin boys. It's shocking to think that there had been a time when the only problem I had was the ruckus of two four-year-olds playing on my flight.
All I wanted was for them to stop talking just an hour ago and now I wished with every bone in my body that I would hear them laughing once more. But they weren't there. They were gone. I'll never forget the look in their mother's eyes, she didn't even shed a tear, her body was an empty shell with nothing left inside and her face was stoic. Expressionless. I can only imagine how much it must hurt, her grip slipping in the commotion, the realisation that her babies were a part of the massacred group of innocent people. She sat like that for a long time.

What was left of the survivors decided that staying inside the plane was the best option, little did they know that their decision wasn't unanimous. We were all worried we would lose our lives. Almost everyone had something they were still fighting for, a reason that they didn't want to die. No one noticed the quiet, pale woman walk towards the exit doors. Almost everyone had something left to live for. Almost everyone. Not everyone. The mother of the twins continued nearing closer to the door, after all... what more could she lose? She had died when her children had. Grief had consumed her, and she no longer cared about anything. When she opened the doors, all eyes turned to her as she walked down the steps to the ground.
It was a light grey colour but after the carnage it was stained a dark red, trails of blood from where the creatures had dragged the bodies away. She continued down the steps as the rest of us watched in horrified shock. I knew they were attracted to sound when she made it safely to the ground and still wasn't attacked. That changed when she let out the most heart-wrenching scream I had ever heard. I saw it that time, it was a blur, but I saw one of those things run at her. It was black and definitely had more than two legs, it was hard to distinguish anything else with the speed it passed by. The woman had disappeared, the creature had hit her like a car and whatever was left of her was far from where she had stood.

Maybe if one person hadn't shouted in fear, the rest of them would still be alive. But it had a domino effect, once one had screamed, the rest followed. The noise attracted a few of those things, they were clawing at the roof and making screeching noises as they tried desperately to reach us. The screaming was louder then. I was quiet though; it was as if I had zoned out and started to work automatically. I scrambled through the crowd of about thirty people, all of them out of control and overwrought. I stayed silent as I struggled through the shrieking crowd, I don't think I could have yelled even if I had wanted to, my voice was caught in my throat. I walked down the steps and prepared to die, even before all this I wasn't exactly the happiest person. I know they say that suicide is cowardly, but I had oddly come to terms with it, in fact I felt brave.
I was ready to look death in the face, but death didn't come for me. The sound of metal scraping and screaming knocked me out of my trance and the things I saw when I turned around will haunt me forever.

It's been twenty-three days since the apocalypse started, you're probably wondering how I'm still alive. There's a simple explanation. These things have a very short lifespan. Most of them died out a few days after they had first attacked. The sun would make the flesh on their backs rot and insects like maggots would eat them from the outside, after a few days or so they would succumb to their wounds. Ten days after the airplane incident, there were dozens of bodies of the aliens, all of them missing pieces of skin, and after twenty days all that was left was bones. 
That's the thing that stories don't tell you, these things weren't  designed to live on Earth, they hadn't evolved like we had. The ones that were left now stayed in the shadows, but even then, they didn't survive very long without sustenance. New ones would emerge every so often, they hatched from eggs laid by the creatures. We haven't had any trouble with any of them in four days now. The truth is the real problem now wasn't the human-eating monsters on the Earth, it was the remaining people roaming around in gangs.