The Monsters Within Earth

I call them ‘moles.’ No, they’re not the funny-looking animals that dig tunnels underground and eat the roots from your mother's garden. These are creatures so terrifying that the first time I saw one, I pissed myself. 

It all started during a global heatwave, unlike anything humanity had ever witnessed. I like to call it ‘the Heat.’ Dramatic right? Anyways, cities were left without power for weeks, the oceans steamed and left beaches littered with cooked fish, and Antarctica turned into the biggest lake in the world. Scientists worldwide tried to figure out what was causing the heatwave, but came up empty. If I had paid any attention in science class at school, I might be able to elaborate on the matter, but I felt like I could relay on my own two eyes better than any nerdy moron in a white jacket telling me it’s hot outside. 

Four weeks into the heatwave, something happened. The ground shook so violently that it opened the earth and devoured towns, cities, and countries. Suddenly, everybody turned into a nerdy moron in a white jacket and proclaimed they had the answers to what was going on. They blamed humanity and climate change, saying the end we had all predicted had simply come sooner than we thought. 

The first attack happened on the fifth Monday of the Heat, in London. That was the day the world ended. Well, it was the beginning of the end. They first described these things as the size of gorillas with four to six legs on each side and crawled like a scorpion. “A monster sent from the depths of Hell with a body so black it eats the light and teeth so sharp it cuts away the very air we breathe.”  

Leave it to the media to start a panic. 

Unfortunately, the media was wrong. There was not just ‘a’ monster. There were ‘many’ monsters. This thing did not breach the earth alone. Soon London and many other cities were overrun, the moles pillaging what was left of the hollow cities and killed anything and everything in its path. We soon found out they had been in the earth the whole time and the Heat only allowed them to hatch and pillage. People all around the world fled to rural forests secluded from the terrors that befell the world. 

My family included. 

My name is Lukas Towers, and I lived in Vancouver, Canada, with my sister Daisy and my mom. We packed backpacks, tents, food, and everything in between and set out into the forest like a bunch of doomsday freaks. Mom made us walk until the city looked like a speck, and then she made us walk further. Dad was overseas helping with the attack on London and never made it back.

We managed alright on our own, and every so often, we would hear or see people in the forest. Sometimes it was only one person, sometimes it was a family like ours, but mom told us to leave them alone. If the moles were attacking cities, she thought it was because they could sense when people gathered. She said if we allowed people to stay with us, it might attract them. 

So we denied them a place to rest, a place to eat, and sleep. There are nights when I think about those people, wandering the forest like animals being hunted and on the run. I wonder if they ever found a place to stay, or if they died. 

Mom did talk to them sometimes, asking them if they knew anything. Some would ramble on about how they were growing wings and were starting to attack from the sky, or how they’re laying their eggs in human corpses. Once I would have laughed at those people and call them deranged, but the truth is, anything could be real. I realized I had to take every word, lie, or reality, and believe in it. 

The isolation got to mom, and she would mumble things to herself or flinch whenever I touched her. Then one morning, I woke up, and mom wasn’t in the tent. Daisy and I watched for her all day and I prayed she would come back. She never did. 

Two weeks after that, I heard a noise just as the sun was starting to rise. I reached over and grabbed the four-inch hunting blade from my shoe at the foot of the blankets and peeked my head through the small opening of our tent. 

My breath hitched, and my heart nearly dropped out of my chest. It was just as big as they said it was, if not bigger. Its body was like a void in the fresh morning light, so black that it hurt to look at. Its legs were half the size of my body with razor-sharp spikes on the ends.

I reached over and shook Daisy, my eyes still on the mole. I got a low growl in return, but she finally opened her eyes. They went wide when she saw the knife in my hand, but I put a finger to my lips, begging her to keep quiet. She looked past me and through the tent to the impossibly big figure rummaging around our camp. 

She screamed. 

The mole turned faster than I could blink, it’s blue eyes glowing with an unnatural gleam and a look that I recognized as hunger.  

That was when my body failed me, and I sat there frozen and pissed myself. 

Daisy was still next to me, and she must have seen it turn towards us because she was screaming again. Her panic brought me back, and I looked back at her and told her to run. She quickly got out of the blankets and started unzipping the tent’s back while I began unzipping the front. 

“Daisy, you get out,” I was breathing hard now, my hands shaking as I pulled the zipper, “and you run. You don’t stop running until you don’t recognize where you are. And even after that, you keep running. I’ll come find you. But no matter what,” I turned to look at her, eyes red and tears rolling down her soft cheeks. God, she was only eight. “Don’t come back.” And then the flap to our tent was down, and I watched as the mole came running at me with its six legs penetrating the ground with ease. The face- if you could even call it that- was big, with a mouth filled with teeth that looked like blades and gleamed against the morning fog. It’s jaws unhinged as it roared and charged.

I looked back to make sure Daisy had gotten out, and I could see her small form still dressed in her PJs running into the forest. I just had to buy her time. 

Despite every inch of my body telling me to run the other way, I charged at the mole, knife in hand. It was only a few yards away when it launched itself, springing from its two back legs and leaped through the air. I was lucky its legs didn’t puncture my body as the mole took me down. I began to sweat as the mole towered over me and it wasn’t just from my nerves but from it. Steam was rising from every inch of the mole’s body.

One leg came down, missing my neck by mere inches. The next grazed my arm and I couldn’t help but scream. I did my best to stay under it as I rammed the hunting knife into the mole, hoping I would be able to puncture some vital organs (if this thing even had organs). But the blade bent. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my ‘oh shit’ moment. 

Not only was the mole incredibly hot- at this point, my body was covered in sweat- but it was covered in scales as rigid as stone. Still trying to avoid being skewered like a kabob, I looked for any weak spot it might have.

The mole screamed in anger, an unearthly sound worse than a pig at a slaughterhouse. It reared up on it’s four hind legs standing eleven feet tall, it’s mouth open to show a tunnel of those deadly teeth reaching into its throat. I had one chance. 

Just as the mole was about to end my life, I struck. The blade embedded itself into one of its eyes, and I kept pushing down until the pommel was lodged in the mole. Red-orange liquid at a boiling temperature oozed from its eye, covering my hand. Nothing could compare to that searing pain as it cooked my hand.

The mole recoiled, falling on its back and thrashed on the ground like a spider. It scrambled to get the blade from its eye and I didn’t stick around long enough to see if it got it out. I got up, dizzy from the pain of my burnt hand, and ran. 

I got about a hundred yards before I heard it scream again, that terrible sound echoing through the forest—a promise of death. It followed me, slower from partial blindness, pain, or blood loss. Whatever it was, I was thankful for the extra time. 

The weeks out here I had spent wandering the forest had come in handy. I knew every broken tree, large boulder, and shrub in a five miles radius. While the mole was focused on hunting me, it didn’t realize that I was hunting it too.

I jumped over fallen logs, dashed between giant trees, and used fallen leaves to slide and gain speed down slopes. The lake opened up in front of me, and I hid behind a tree and waited for the mole to catch up. I heard it come tumbling thorough but when it beheld the lake, it had gone eerily silent. It could be right on the other side of the tree for all I knew. Enough waiting. I counted to five and made a run for it.

The ice on the lake would hold my weight, unlike the creature that weighed a helluva lot more than I did. 

It followed me without hesitation. The ice was thicker near the shore, but the mole would fall right through towards the middle. I heard it slipping on the ice; sometimes it’s pointed legs pierced it, sometimes they slid right against it. I turned for half a second, only to find the mole right behind me, it’s two front legs, and their pointed tips reaching for me. 

The mole fell on me, and me on the ice. I was not shocked that the ice broke, but the water’s freezing temperature reset my body, throwing it into shock. My hand became a faint tickle of pain as the water chilled my blood. The mole had caught me with its two front legs, and if I had any time for humor, I would say it was hugging me. But every second counted. I wiggled around as the mole began to jerk against the cold of the water. Steam rose from its body like a hot iron being dipped in water, I could hear it sizzling.

I used my legs, kicking at the beast until it lost its grip. With little oxygen left in my lungs, I broke free and swam towards the top. I could still see the mole struggling beneath me, so I worked fast, careful not to break the ice around me as I lifted myself from the water. I was nearly free, all but my ankles were still in the water when one of the mole’s legs breached land and struck home in my calf. I felt it tear through skin and muscle as it broke the ice beneath me. It used my leg as an anchor as it began to pull itself from the water. I was stuck, hypothermia settled into my bones as my leg began to bleed out. Fear paralyzed my body, and I could do nothing but watch as the mole prepared to make its killing blow. 

I swear it smiled just before it came at me, it's terrible mouth opened wide, big enough to tear my head from my body in one foul chomp. All I could think about was if Daisy had gotten far enough away to avoid the same fate. Call me a coward, but I closed my eyes, unable to watch my life end.

Seconds passed. Seconds that I shouldn’t have had. I opened my eyes to find the mole falling back, arrow- three arrows- embedded in the mole’s throat. Its leg was ripped from my own, and I couldn’t help the wail that tore itself from my throat. The mole fell back, breaking the new ice that had formed and into the water.  

I didn’t wait to see if it came back up. I crawled using my elbows, dragging my bleeding leg behind me away from where the mole went down. I looked out to the shore where the arrows had come from and found a person running towards me. As they got closer, I realized it was a girl -an angel in a white jacket with hair as red as fall leaves. She was saying something, but I couldn’t hear. My eyes were too heavy, and I couldn’t fight to keep them open. Her face was the last thing I saw before the world fell dark. 

Warmth. What did warmth mean? If I was dead, did that mean I was on a sunny beach in the Silver City or roasting on a fire pit in Hell? I opened my eyes, fearing the worst. 

The lakeshore lay about a hundred yards from where I sat under a tree. It was still cold, colder even now, with a small dusting of snow covering the ground. I was bundled in God only knows how many blankets making it near impossible to move any part of my body. That didn’t mean I couldn’t feel. My leg was in agony, stiff and hot, and any movement, no matter how small, brought tears to my eyes. My hand, too, I felt, was bandaged under the many layers of blankets. It hurt, but the pain was little compared to my leg. 

To my left was a small fire, the sound of crackling wood comforting. Beyond the fire was a trail of frozen red-brown liquid leading from the fire to the lake. The liquid, I realized, was blood, my blood. By the sight of it, I knew I was lucky to be alive, that I probably shouldn’t be alive.

Wait, why was I alive? I began to remember the angel- the girl- who had killed the mole. I looked around for her, and it was almost as if she knew I was looking for her. I heard footsteps. 

“H-hello?” My throat was dry, my tongue heavy in my mouth. 

“You’re awake.” She came into view carrying a pile of wood.

“I think so?” I tried sitting up, but every movement hurt.

“Don’t move.” She dropped the wood near the fire and came to my side. 

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Willa. I was out looking for wood when I heard you screaming. I saw you running, so I hid, and then I saw the creature running after you,”

“Did you see my sister?” She looked confused, then sad. She shook her head no, and dread filled my body. I had to find Daisy. 

“I only saw you. I followed you out, but I only saw it when it grabbed you, and you both fell into the lake. You were down there for a while, and I knew it wasn’t likely you would come back up. But I waited, and then you did.” 

“You’re sure you didn’t see my sister? She ran off before me-”

“I didn’t see anyone but you.” She said it firmly in a tone that I knew she wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings. 

“Thank you.” It was the only thing I could think to say.

“You’re welcome.” 

She went about arranging the wood for a while longer and then took some of the smaller branches and made the ends pointed with a knife.

“How long was I asleep for?”

“Two days.” 

“Two days!” 

“Keep your voice down, you’re in no shape to fight off another one of those things,” She threw me a glare and continued making what I thought were arrows. 

“When do you think I’ll be able to talk again?” The thought hadn’t occurred to me that I could be sitting here for days, weeks. 

“It’s hard to say. It missed the bone, but there’s a lot of muscle damage. Walking?” She cocked her head to the side in thought. “I’d say a few days. But even with that, it’ll be with a severe limp, and you’ll need a walking stick.”

“Shit,” A heavy sigh left my body. Too much, it was all too much. 

“After that, we’ll find your sister.” She looked at me.

“What?”

“You want to find her, don’t you?”

“I-I do, but why would you help me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? It’s not like I have anything else to do.” She shuffled around her jacket pockets and pulled out a bag filled with mixed nuts and a metal flask. 

“Where did you get the nuts?”

“I ran into a couple a few weeks ago who gave me a bag,”

“And the drink?”

“Before I left, I grabbed every bottle I could get my hands on,” She had a friendly smile. I wiggled my arms through the blankets, making sure to be careful with my hand. She poured me a handful of peanuts, almonds, and cashews. I tossed them in my mouth, and I swear I had never tasted anything so good. She took a sip from the flask and handed it to me.

“Tomorrow, we get you walking, and then we find your sister.” 

“Tomorrow.” I lifted the flask to my lips and drank.