Rattling. The rumble of an old motor crossing rapid transit rails. Dim tunnel interiors flashing by outside, with no visibility; while the fluorescent lights in the subway car were altogether too bright. Silence, punctuated by coughs, from the deeply unpleasant air seeping in the tightly-locked emergency doors. Claustrophobic loneliness in the assorted crowd. Occasional trembles that made the standing passengers grip to the railings, hand veins bulging.
Cameron kept hunched over his phone. He stood, giving his seat to another passenger – but didn't look their way, keeping his eyes focused on the screen.
"Babe, it's not gonna hold together." Annabella's voice on the other end wavered. "The subway barely works normally. I kept telling them to renovate the rail, mailing them, and now you're on it, and they never listened to-"
"Babe, I'm okay. Breathe." His fingers shook from another jolt below. His smile mismatched the rest of the faces wobbling and behind him, people clutching each other.
She clenched her teeth, and whispered a scream. "Easy for you to say - with your clean air!" She hung her head briefly. The call picked up only rushing, shaking footsteps, as still-standing apartments passed behind. It finally registered coherent words: "Look, babe, sorry. I can't see shit over there. Can barely see shit here. It's falling." Her camera pointed to distant homes, shoddy foundations and boards going horizontal with every tremor. Tree leaves above blew in a flurry, as if scattering from a shock wave.
With a nod, Cameron's face shone in the vibrating, slightly-yellow incandescent lights. "We're helping each other here. They said the next stop is Cedar. When we get together again there-"
"Don't." Suddenly squatting down behind a bus, Annabella first leaned in close enough to show the blood shooting in her eyes; then changed to the other camera to present Cedar Street from ground level.
Behind the gaps in buildings, in the gleam of reflective windows, blue towers shifted. Methodically, diligently, in sync with the ever-active quakes - now tossing and toppling the seated passengers on Cameron's side. Her legs. Her hairless, glistening legs sliced through the vacant office. It left enough of a smoldering hole to reveal a tight, form-fitting gear around her waist. Unlike her flesh, it was so dark - only the barest hints of dying light reflected off its shell-encrusted, bizarre bio-membrane. Everything above was cut off by the top floors, embers dancing among them.
"Run." He mouthed.
"She'll see me."
A scream rang out. On instinct, Annabella’s arms shifted to it. A man sprawled out on the ground, not ten feet away. His voice soon grew hoarse from the yell, shrinking to a small, pleading, "I don't want to die."
The giant hips turned in the distance.
An instantaneous wave of energy burst from 300 feet in the air, oxygen molecules crackling in the wake of the searing ray.
The man no longer existed. Cedar Street no longer existed. Where he stood, all shelter, cover, and traces of life within a straight prism had been skinned off the bedrock. Not even a blink. Not even an ash. The metro tunnels were sliced open.
The aftershock was instantaneous below, and sent the phone escaping from Cameron's hand - as Annabella hollered. An older woman flew against his chest, making his diaphragm spasm. He couldn't tell if he was merely dizzy, or if the blast derailed the car itself.
After some quick apologies, and stumbling searching, he got back to the device. Ignoring stares, and murmurs - everything from chatter about government action to theories on the name and origin of the invader - he forced the dislodged battery back in. While waiting for it to boot up, loading through flashy logos, he slapped himself and performed reality checks – pinching himself and holding his breath. Finally, he put a smile back on when he restarted the video call.
Annabella's bloody, bruised face smiled back, if only briefly. "Thank god. That laser, those eyes beams, it just launched that bus, like - like some kind of leaf, in the... Ow, ow... it stinks..." Glass - from the window she'd propped up against - poked from her left shoulder.
Cameron swallowed. "What in the shit... sit down, I'm coming, babe!"
Attempting to lift the limp arm, despite the stinging, she shook her head. "No, I'm... we gotta keep moving. That - that piece of work left us... nothing to hide behind."
"I'll keep going ahead, so we'll meet at-"
Behind Annabella's camera, in the distance, a set of four slick, liquid-coated fingers descended from the sky - the screen space and remaining structures cutting off everything past her elbow. It penetrated the earth, sending landslides rolling out; and tugging out a worming, sagging string of transit cars. One thumb - if the wet digit could be called that - snapped the container of humans open. Its crack released a stream of coalescing shrieks from inside. Just as suddenly, they halted, as she pulled them out of frame - with a single, elastic snap.
Cameron tugged open an emergency exit, an odd assortment of confused passengers trailing him. "Back. It was Third Street before this."
"Third Street..." Annabella muttered. "She blasted me far enough. I can make it."
The snaking transit tunnels that the passengers dashed through were murky, dim, and clouded with fumes; but they could tell that the ceiling was giving way. Here and there, the whole path appeared to have been squeezed like a great toothpaste tube. A few spots had rays of illumination from the sky - often followed by putrid liquid dripping over the edge, and eating into the rail below. The further they went, the more hints of the outside world sunk in - massive billboards piercing through the steely sky, underground parking areas slowly melting to bubbling tar pits, even foundations smashed down to their level. And then there were the tremors, the continuous tremors, that made them feel like ants burrowing through a hill in a garden...
Annabella kept close to the ground, between a walk and a crawl. Even with no visual sign of the gargantuan visitor, the traces of her rampage were impossible to turn away from. Prints that seemed to carve to the bottom of the earth; steaming rivers of liquid; toppled businesses that had withstood typhoons... it hurt, and looking at them didn't help. She tried to focus on creaking, shattering landmarks to navigate; dashing behind the shell of the old bakery, catching her breath, and repeating the process to get in front of her friend's house. They hadn't talked in weeks. She kept saying to her phone: "It's fine... it's gone... it's fine..."
Right at the platform, Cameron's traveling party encountered an obstacle which outmatched any before. Ticket booths, vending machines, wheelchair accessible ramps - all compressed together in the dirt, forming one ball of impenetrable matter. She'd crushed the station. Cameron, pushing everyone else aside, swung at the clump of ruination - and nothing happened.
He looked back to his phone, panting, almost sobbing - when he noticed a station name hanging above his significant other's head. "Babe... Annabella, you're - here. At the station?"
Seemingly unaware of that fact, she looked behind her. A smile crossed her face for the second time that day - wide, brilliant, proudly showing broken teeth. "Oh, Cameron - honey, honey, finally, I get to hold you again... But it's all - it's broken..."
"Hell, I can find a way up from here. I've got a lot of muscle, a lot of people with me, down here, just gotta - - babe?"
Behind Annabella's happy tears, the sun disappeared. A black, biological, tight-fitting suit eclipsed it; hugging tremendous hips. The scraps of a subway car peeked out from within the darkness – obscured, pressed flat against the giantess' blue, tremendous ass.
As soon as he said "Shit, look out!", the signal broke. The call ended.
"No, no, babe, babe, come on come on... I can't - without you..." He dialed her.
The sky shook, boulders of earthy and concrete debris striking one of the passengers dead beneath. Others instantly rushed away, pulling one another to safety.
Cameron hunched over and called her.
Two immense bulges formed above. Unearthly groans echoed in the tunnels as the street struggled to contain the bursting, horrific pressure of an alien woman taking a seat.
Cameron dialed the number again and again.
A red dot with Annabella's clothes decorated the twin mountains parting the sky, already somewhat washed away by sweat. Through layers upon layers of construction, the sweltering bio-membrane making up the jumpsuit held tightly to her buttocks. It was impossible to see her whole body in the tumbling, dusty wreckage; but simply stretching a leg out from her seated position would be enough to knock over a structure 150 feet away, if her laser vision didn't hit the target first.
Cameron didn't know if she noticed him. He didn’t know if she noticed Annabella, sweet Annabella. He wasn't sure if she was aiming for him, or just wanted to rest her destructive feet. He didn't know how the others got away, if they even could. And he didn't know what the snapping, popping noise was, removing feeling in his legs, then torso, then neck, as her full weight descended and dragged him about the hard railings.
He didn't care. He dialed again, and even when he lost sensation in his hand, he kept calling her name into the darkness that consumed him.
SIGNAL LOST