- One Month Later -
Rain always came when it wasn't wanted. This was no different.
Whether it was another odd Michigan norm or whether rain simply followed them in clouded droves made hardly any difference. Winter had finally surrendered its hold on the land. Now the rain came. Plucking. Picking. Scraping and scratching at the earth. Filling the fermented chasms. Washing pavements clean of months of decay. Again. Again. Again. White mist rose where the drops settled and weren't taken in by the waiting soil.
It was raining.
It had been a month.
And people were vanishing.
The disappearances weren't random. Watches went missing. Patrol sizes changed nothing. The time between each disappearance never repeated itself. Only one thing remained consistent.
No bodies.
Unless Kasper had started hunting in his sleep, it wasn't him.
Nor was it Zero.
Zero had spent over two weeks locked inside the warehouse. He hadn't eaten. Hadn't asked for food. Had barely spoken.
Whatever was taking people...
was something new.
No one said it aloud, but everyone felt it. The deaths they'd dealt to the world had begun circling back. Life was trying to begin again, but could only grow from what remained.
It was raining.
Things were wrong,
and life was strange...
"There's nothing out here." Kasper scanned another rain soaked street.
Zak let out a huff. "Nnnnnope." He flared his wings hard enough to shake droplets into the air.
"I told you not to come."
"-and I told you that you weren't going alone." Zak smiled his Zak-like smile and itched the scruff that had grown along his jawline. He was abnormally proud of the filled in beginnings of a beard and somehow it made him look less new, he was weathered and hallowed out like an overused whiskey flask. "We made it another year." He said sarcastically and shouldered the strap of his rifle before stretching again. "Weee~" This time, he was prepared and flapped once to free the newly added droplets. "Do you wanna call it a day?"
Kasper looked down the road. "Let's check one more house."
Zak nodded and they walked along the overgrown roadside, it was all so green. Green in ways they never thought they would see again.
It was always something about the rain. How it brought back the life in ways its frozen sibling couldn't. It was all ways. This or that, do or die, and no clear paths. A deer broke between the houses, darted across the street and through a half decayed fence. When it cleared the low fence behind the structure it turned, flagged its tail, and sped off through the yards.
The two watched it go like dogs choked by a chain that kept them from pointlessly trailing after.
"This one." Kasper made a cut through the grass, and took up the railing of an older home in his hand.
"This one?" Zak mirrored and stopped just shy of the steps. "It looks-" He looked in the direction of the deer path. "Old."
"I know." Kasper muttered. "This one."
YOU ARE READING
The Eden Projects (FINAL EDITING)
Action"This story has no hero." Set in the distant future, where the government has been overthrown, and a new world power has risen, known only by the Moniker "ARK Corporation." We follow Kasper as he fights to survive in a nightmare where wrong is made...
