Suddenly a crack shattered the valley, a razor-straight split that shot from peak to peak of the ranges east and west of Cardinal River. It came with a deafening clap, and a flash of light like lightning - and in fact, in the aftermath of the terrific force released by the splitting of five miles of bedrock from ridge to valley floor to mountain peak, as Cardinal River halved itself into twin waterfalls pouring over the cliffs of the newborn chasm, stiff fingers of brittle lightning uncurled and groped out at the suddenly smoky air. Spot fires could be seen, flickering here and there in the dry forest.
But within minutes, all such sights were rendered vividly trivial by what came next. Boiling and pouring up out of the crack itself was a horror never before witnessed: hordes and rivers of beings which, while roughly man-sized, were of no shape familiar to the surface of this planet. Later observations would describe them: skin of fleshy pinkish color with a sickening grey sheen; trilaterally symmetrical; three muscular arms ringing a central bulbous head teeming with long, weaving, whisker-like filaments the color of exposed veins, but with no other visible sensory organs; three slender legs radiating out from the bottom of the creatures' trunks, with underneath and between them a hideous pink-red tail - if it was a tail - like a thick, pulsating worm.
But all such observation came later. In the horror of their coming, it was impossible to take them in as individual specimens. Not in those first moments, as eyes and minds rebelled at the spectacle of their sheer teeming numbers, as a bee-swarm noise of clicking and gibbering molested the senses of the poor, peaceful citizens of that bucolic valley; as tumbling masses of bilious invaders came roiling forward and outward, overwhelming sanity and opposition with the casual ease of a tsunami breakfasting on a shantytown. Their bodies and especially their arms had a horrific physical strength - the stubby, writhing, dry fingers of their brute hands could tear flesh. They moved faster than the mind could accept.
In the end, it was me who killed them. I killed them all. With my bare hands, and despite all their high-tech weaponry. Which was not evident at first, by the way. The weaponry. It turns out they were carrying various devices in their black and purple tri-fanny packs. But even outnumbered as I no doubt was, and even with all those sonic spritzers and weird-ray emitters, all their advantages availed them naught. It was me who saved the day, in that dire hour for humanity. With my bare hands - and a little help from my wilderness friends!
I don't mind the effort and the sacrifice. Or the thankless task. The heroism I am occasionally called upon to perform is a small price to pay, for the sweet and peaceful gift of the everyday, that unspools between cataclysms.
Ahhh. Life: sweet as hell, and well worth fighting for.
After I finished mopping up the surface contingent, I walked straight over to the crack, peered thoughtfully into its abyssal depths, took a big ol' step over the edge, and dropped right in. I'll let you know how that worked out for them, later on.
You can just about guess, I bet!
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