Short story: Blackness

This is a horror story, not safe for soft souls. Please read with discretion. 

It was gory. That was all I could feel when I reached there. The whole place stunk of blood and decay. Decapitated limbs, headless bodies, empty eye sockets, separate digits, I can't even muster to describe the whole scene. This was the beginning. There was a small shelter to my right resembling a hut. Smoke bellowed through its windows. I could see the front door was closed. I ran towards it while I noticed wild and domestic animals decorating the path in the same tragical nature as the humans. Vultures were feeding on some of the decaying flesh. It took me less than a minute to reach the door and before I could hold the handle, I bent down and puked, only blessed with bile as I had not eaten my breakfast for the day yet. I did not hope I would eat for some quantifiable amount of time after the gruesome sights. I opened the handle and was greeted with more black smoke. A large room came to life when the it cleared. It was a small warehouse with metal pulleys and elevated platforms that could hold cars. The room was patinated with soot everywhere. The soot did not miss covering even the tiny holes in the water drains under the pipes to my right. There were bodies of people sitting on the chairs. They were charred beyond recognition. The smell was so repulsive that i ran out immediately. I looked at the large land mass that lay beyond the warehouse. It was perfectly clean and empty. The trees and the shrubs were green and fresh. I could see some rabbits jumping over lush green grass unaware of the horrific area that neighbored it.

I walked down the slope behind the warehouse. The land was soft and wet. A small pool that was left over from a drying lake reflected a bright morning sun that shone over me. I called the control room and relayed what I saw. Tina wanted more detailed information and so I continued my walk. The wet land that was a pond ended in a drier and stronger floor that was the start of a forest, or so I thought. Tina wanted me to recon the area to see if there were any active threats still lurking. Her assertiveness made me uneasy. 'Does she know what happened here?' I thought to myself, but I knew better than to ask the question only to be greeted with a lie. Ok. Tina should not hijack my thoughts.

'Recon. Complete the report and get the heck out of this place,' I said to myself. Still, it was tough. Moving forward I came under the shades of wide and old trees. I am no botanist or a tree enthusiast and they did not resemble the ones that grew in my city, so I obviously could not name it then. Tina later conveyed in my walkie that they were neem and that they had huge medicinal value. I started walking toward the trunk of a tree to hide myself from a wider angle in front of me and the first thing that struck me was a shiny protrusion. It was a cylindrical structure made of some metal that was driven into the trunk. I looked around to see whether the other trees got the same treatment. They were drilled into each one of them, that I assumed. I touched it with my fingers and had to remove them at once as the metal was very cold. I took my insulating glove out of my pack and wore it over my right hand. It neatly aligned over my large fingers and the empty chamber that should have housed the pinky finger was neatly covered. I turned it on and brought it to life. Holding on the pile I tried to pull it with all my strength and knew I had to use the strength in both my hands. I curled my left hand over my right and began pulling with all my might. I should have known better and just carried out my assignment. Poking around was not a good idea. Once I was able to give all my strength, the pile gave in a bit and began to move. Still, it would come out a bit. There was a thin engraving near the edge of the pile, it ran around the whole surface. I thought it should've been a thread, holding something inside, like a pen held under it's cap. I tried to rotate it anti-clockwise as it was the direction we used to open stuff in my place.

It was right then the pile became longer. Extra metal protruded from the engraving and pushed outward automatically, like a hydraulic system. I was not wrong in that it fell down and green liquid began to pour out wildly. The sound would be revealing. My immediate reaction was to bend down and pick up the part of the metallic cylinder that fell and stop the flow. It was then my walkie sounded. It was already ten minutes after the last call and Tina was restless. She needed answers. I explained what I was trying to do, and the sound of the pouring liquid was so deafening that I couldn't hear that crying woman over the other end.

All I heard was 'run.....go....clear the fo....st'.

Panic stuck me. I deduced that she wanted me to flee the scene. Should I try to close the flow or not, I didn't care about it and started to run toward my ship. I did not bother to go around the puddle of water that was left off in the drying pool. It was considerably lesser than when I had gone the other way and considering the small interval between them, I felt there were larger forces at work.I would not be bluffed.

It was when I almost climbed up the valley to reach the warehouse that I heard them. Turning around, I viewed the scariest of sights I've ever been cursed to. There were thousands of small insect like shiny creatures that started climbing down from the top of trunk of the trees. I should use the word flowing as the movements did not resemble of having caused by shifting limbs. They covered the entire floor of the forest and the green grass quickly turned black. I tilted my vision toward the angle where I saw some rabbits running around. The insects just flowed over them and I could see the lump it formed diminishing. After a second it was flat as if the insects just swallowed the entire living creature. I turned around toward my ship and began to run amok. The dead and decaying parts of the animals crowded my path and my boots and pants were covered with flesh and blood. I could not give my thoughts to the gruesomeness of this as my enemy was still on it's path.

About to reach the hanging ladder beneath the floor of my ship I tried to turn around to get a sight of my enemy's distance when I ran straight into my ship's leg. One hit and the next thing I saw was staring straight at those million insects that instrumentally made way toward me. The land was painted black and all the torso and decaying flesh simply vanished into thin air, or into the insects anyway, as they were still passing over the places the rotting waste lain before. I could not muster enough energy to get up and flee the place and the blackening continued right before my eyes. A black carpet simply covering everything my eyes could see. The walkie sounded and my thumb pressed the transponder.

"Where the hell are you? I am trying to give your co-ordnates to the evac team but can't get a sight of you from the SAT images," it was Tina.

"Uh..huh?"

"WHERE ARE YOU?" Tina was crying so loud the speaker jarred.

"I am right below my ship"

"What in the world are you doing under it? Having a beer in the shade? Climb up and flee the scene. Those creatures will convert you into a set of bones before you know it," she responded as the black carpet moved closer to me.

"I..I can't move. I hit the leg. I can't move Tina. Please get me out."

"Ok," and she dropped off.

My predators covered more ground towards me. It was another five meters that lay between my living body and death when I heard evac ship lowering in low altitude right in front of me. I tried to gather all my strength to get up but I could not do it. The crash had impacted some really important nerves inside my head as my legs and anything below my hip stopped working. The insects continued their march.

The evac ship lowered enough to view me and the front gullwing opened. I saw Richie trying to lean out and throw his arms towards me. His legs were tied to a rope and he fell a meter short in front of me. It should've been just inches between his legs and the insects. I was not going to be saved. My life flashed in front of me, the joyous moments I spent in the park with my dad, my first hero. The mighty thud I got on my crotch when I tried the seesaw for the first time. The training with the cadet corps academy. The first love. Martha, the blond angel. Her first kiss.

I felt a sudden shake and saw Ritchie's hands on my shoulders. His legs were tied to a beam in the evac ship. He slapped me hard after recognizing I had zoned out. I myself could not believe I could zone out at that situation, but our minds are such complex objects. They would be strong and methodical one moment and shut down the next.

Richie pulled me above and I started to stand on my lifeless legs. The insects reached the first aid kit that got knocked off from me when I had hit the leg. The huge bag deflated to nothingness within seconds. They were only about ten inches from me that I finally left the surface and began getting lifted.
The skin on my shoulders pained very much of the friction with Richie's holding gloves. He had no time to tie me to the beam just like he was. Slight pain grew into intense anguish in a few moments.

I could feel the heat on my shoulders and within seconds I began to sweat. I did not know why they were not lifting us up higher but then remembered the training sessions. No firm attachments, no lift. I did not know their plans or the length of agony I had to endure before this would stop, before I could be transported back to base. It was then I felt the slip. My shoulders were so wet from my sweat that even mighty holding glove's grips could not do it's job. Right shoulder was dropping faster than the left. Richie tried to get a second grip and the moment he left my shoulder I dropped.

The landing was not painful as it was just a meter above the surface but the feeling I got immediately after was weird. It was as though a highly viscous liquid was poured on me, from my leg toward my face. Horror engulfed my body slowly as I felt weight over me increasing, the highly viscous liquid was devouring me. It completed my legs and rose over my stomach then my chest. My hands began to lose life. I tilted my head towards my right hand and saw a part of my body going invisible, into blackness. I could not stop screaming and twitched with wild spasms. They reached my throat. The crawling tickled my neck and my nape as it finally reached my face. I was still screaming looking straight at Richie who was watching the whole scene like being in a cinema. The insects reached my open mouth and started pouring inside it. My throat got blocked not being able to accomodate so many. Finally my eyes got covered with blackness.

The blackness was all around me when I woke up screaming at the middle of the night.