The sound of growling was unmistakable in the stark silence. I was stuck in place. Most monsters had better hearing than the average person; maybe whoever or whatever was outside had a strong sense of smell as well?
If rule number one was to survive, rule number two was never, ever open the front door at night.
If Dad said it once, he said it a thousand times. “Do not open that door, Soli. You gon' get in a world of hurt if you do.”
He didn't threaten me. He didn't have to. He was as mild-mannered a man as could be had in this here world. But if you witnessed a fount of liquid flames pouring out from the sky to obliterate a city, you became a little more high-strung than usual.
I knew as sure as I stood here, frozen in fear, that the rules mattered less to me than saving my dad’s life. Even in the full dark I would have opened it. I was so close to the door, ready to pounce in case my dad needed me. Ready and hoping he would appear.
Survive.
I swallowed down my sigh, reality sharpening its edges down my throat and resting in my heart. It was this way of thinking that got so many of us into trouble, first with the Rave disease, and then with the Reapers. It made us soft, weak, easily picked apart.
No wonder we had been broken so easily. First, the Reapers dressed themselves up to look like us. And then they discovered that bonds of love, our own humanity, would override any sense and precaution.
Any sense of survival.
And what were we if we didn’t have the sense to survive?
My mother’s humanity had been the lure that eventually got her killed when she went outside in the dark.
Survive with no regrets if you can. Survive anyway if you can’t.
The old wood of the porch groaned as something stepped heavily upon it. Whatever it was didn't have the weight or feel of my dad. There was a hesitation there.
Besides, if it was my dad, he would know better than to test the front door. But there was nothing and I was too frozen in place to do anything about it.
Pressure mounted as if a storm front decided to sit itself down right in front of my door. The air was thick with humidity and tension. And then something like a high-pitched note reverberated into the air like a plucked violin string. It was there and then gone.
Breath held, I walked to the door, avoiding the warped wood in the flooring, unlike the intruder, and put my eye to the lookout. I couldn't be sure that it wasn't just my mind or my eyelashes or a trick of the shadows, but a figure cut against the moonlight among the trees, barely a darting shadow.
I knew it.
Dad and I had taken the precaution of cutting back the trees from around the house to keep any intruders from sheltering behind them or using them to climb over the wards and drop in on us from above.
We couldn't do anything about the Reapers who could defy air or had other genetic modifications, but we hadn’t had to worry about those actions in these parts. We were so far removed from the cities that unless my dad was a high-priority person of interest for the government that I didn’t know about, no one was looking for us.
I crouched by the door, gun beside me, and stayed vigilant.
We should have left the city sooner. Especially when rumors saturated the air that new monsters, bigger monsters, prowled the streets at night.
The collective consciousness of our community had rolled together and poured out its questions in one voice to the heavens. Were these shifters? What should be done? Though the collective asked each other these questions, the answer they had waited on was from Dad.
My dad wasn’t fooled by politicians wearing masks. “Shifters may look like monsters from time to time but they can still talk at us, reason with us despite the skin they wear. These here, the ones roaming at night, are not one of us. Not one of our protectors that kept us safe from the Ravers, ungrateful though we may be.
“These are true monsters, concocted by the government for their own purpose. They have no kinship with us.”
My mother had agreed with my father, though she tackled it from a simpler angle with me. “Don’t listen to what the news said or what others said. These aren’t ‘genetic freaks,’ harmless and prone to ill-health. These are genetic soldiers, sent by the government, and they’re coming for everyone who isn’t like them.”
Everyone said that it could never happen. The government couldn’t run our lives, they said. There would never be a way for the government to be able to build walls between nations, or cut people off from travel between states.
People shouldn't have said nothing.
They were paying so much attention to what couldn't be done, they didn't see what was actually happening before their eyes. The government wasn't run by humans anymore. The Reapers had taken over.
My parents, or at least my dad, never believed the government in anything. Sure, he had always done as he was told like any other good citizen, but he had never believed the fairy tales they spouted on the television. "Sunny girl, there is a difference between surviving and also believing. I will never judge you for what you need to do to survive."
My dad had always been big on survival, even Before. Probably because he’d been a monster hunter his entire life, like his dad and granddad before him. Survival was a way of life for the Bishops.
Made sense that it was his number one rule. "Soli, the only thing you can do nowadays is survive. So do
