Lilly's King

Lilly stayed as still as possible underneath the massive truck parked on the side of the field. She tried to keep her breathing as quiet as possible, not wanting to make even the slightest sound.

A small group of alien creatures was moving in her direction. The cross between a lizard and a spider was something right out of a nightmare.

But, as Lilly learned over the last few weeks, they had one tiny disadvantage. They were completely blind. As long as she didn’t make a sound, they should move right past her.

At least, she hoped they would. If she had any hope of getting back to her sisters, she needed to escape this field and get to the small town of Sikes, Louisiana, where she prayed she’d find the medicine she needed.

Her breath caught in her chest when the scraping sound of the claws drew closer.

Tilting her head to the side, Lilly held her breath as she watched the swarm move past her, heading in the direction she had just come from.

She had no idea why there were so many of them out here. From what she saw of the alien monsters, they liked to eat anything that moved or had a pulse.

There wasn’t much of that out in the sticks of Louisiana, so the massive numbers of the creatures confused her.

Hundreds of legs tore up the asphalt as they moved past the truck, making the heavy piece of machinery shake and groan with the force of their almost impenetrable bodies hitting it as they passed.

Lilly closed her eyes, taking in slow, silent breaths, and thought about her sisters waiting in the old farm house they had found the night before.

Her heart wrenched at the memory of how sick her sister Violet was.

Once the horde had passed, Lilly lay for a few moments longer, her backpack gripped tightly in her hand. She needed it to collect the medicine.

As a medical student, she should know what to get to cure Violet, but her field didn’t involve pharmaceuticals. She was a surgical intern with only one year of residency left.

Or, she had been before the planet went to shit, and she and her sisters went on the run.

With one last glance around her, Lilly moved as quietly as she could over the hard, damp ground.

She shuffled out from under the truck, scanning the area for the smallest of movements, before she got to her feet.

In the distance, she could see the dark swarm of the creatures rushing back to the woods she had just ventured through. Somewhere on the other side of the forest, her sisters were waiting. Lilly prayed the creatures weren’t going in their direction.

She thought about going back to check on them.

But then she reminded herself that her baby sister needed the medication desperately, and none of them had eaten in over two days.

If Lilly didn’t get the medicine soon, it wouldn’t matter if the creatures found them.

With a silent rage of defiance, Lilly thrust up her middle finger at the departing mass, holding it up for a few seconds, then dropped her hand to her side.

It was the creatures’ fault Violet was at death’s door. She had picked an apple from a tree on the way out of New Orleans, but the fruit had the slime of the creatures all over it.

It had dried in the mid-August Louisiana sun, but that hadn’t stopped her from getting violently sick and weak.

With a long breath to calm her nerves, Lilly spun around and moved fast toward the town, only a mile away.

The town was eerily quiet.

The creatures had clearly been through it already, and most of the buildings still bore evidence of their passing.

Doors hung off their hinges. The wreckage of a bus lay twisted and mangled on the shredded asphalt.

Lilly followed the signs to the local clinic, keeping her eyes open for the slightest movement or any sound around her.

The clinic, if one could call it that, was a small, one-story, red brick building. The only thing identifying it was the sign posted on the door.

Lilly entered the reception area, pausing to take in the blood dried on the walls, floor, and chairs.

Bile rose in her throat at the sight of insides still laying in the corner, an unfinished meal for the creatures, and the remains of what once was a living person.

She had noticed over the last few weeks that although the creatures ate just about every living thing, they seemed to stay away from the liver.

It was a common sight to see the organ laying around the streets, homes, and buildings they moved through.

Pushing back the thoughts of what it must be like to be eaten alive like that, Lilly followed the small sign on the wall next to the reception desk that pointed to the hall.

Her heart raced at the dim passage leading to the pharmacy, but sheer determination made her place one silent foot in front of the other.

When she reached the door marked as the pharmacy, tears burned her eyes and her heart felt like it would crumble into tiny pieces at the sight of the bare room.

Not one box or vial of medication was left on the shelves.

More despair filled her body as her lungs seized on a whimper and her body slumped with defeat, exhaustion, and malnutrition.

She turned away from the empty room, wiping at her face as tears rolled down her cheeks.

She had to pull herself together, but the pain in knowing she had failed her baby sister was so deep, a sob escaped her lips, echoing in the empty clinic.

Slapping a hand over her mouth, Lilly listened to the sounds around her as her heart raced.

Once back out on the street, she squinted her eyes at the blinding summer sun. She walked along the wall of the clinic, her mind reeling at the thought that there was no hope left for Violet.

She would die soon if Lilly didn’t figure out a way to help her.

Pausing to catch her breath and to calm her rising grief, Lilly pressed her back against the wall of the clinic and lowered her eyes to the ground.

Another quiet sob escaped her lips. “Oh, Vi, I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the empty street.

With one last deep breath, Lilly pushed off the wall and raised her eyes.

She had to fight down the urge to scream.

There was a massive man standing a mere ten feet away from her.

His huge, powerful body radiated danger, and the two long, deadly blades in his hands made her body tremble.

There was something very different about him. Not just his massive body, towering over her by at least a foot, but his eyes were a deep, glowing green color.

His ears pointed at the tips, twitching as he stared at her. His mouth was turned up in a snarl, showing off the sharp, long fangs in his mouth.

His slightly flatter nose held faint ridges on it that flared as he took in a breath.

Lilly backed into the wall again, her body filled with ice-cold terror at the sight of the obviously inhuman male before her.

In the blink of an eye, the man raised the knives at his sides and charged toward her, moving so fast that Lilly could only squeeze her eyes shut and throw up a pleading hand in front of her face.

A sound right beside her ear that sounded like metal hitting brick filled her ears, and Lilly snapped her eyes open to find the huge man standing right in front of her.

His powerful, muscular arms caged her in, and his equally muscular body was only inches away from hers. Their eyes locked again, his burning green gaze looking right into her soul.

She felt all the breath leave her body when she looked into those eyes. Each one was like its own emerald galaxy, and she felt hypnotized by them.

Lilly took in a shaky breath, feeling the barely contained violence radiating off him in hot, fetid waves.

Her mind snapped back to the situation at hand, and she tried to locate the pain in her body where his knives had pierced her skin, but her body had no pain. She slowly realized… He hadn’t hurt her.

Her eyes finally tore away from his smoldering gaze to look to the side.

Her heart fell, and her eyes went wide as she saw one of the creatures mere inches away from her face, its head skewered on the man’s blade, dead eyes staring out at nothing.

She whipped her head to the other side and found the same sight to her left.

She swallowed, realizing just how close she had come to dying, and turned wide eyes back to look at the man.

He cocked his head to the side, a frown creasing his brow as he studied her, then tilted it down to look at her small, five-foot-six frame.

“You saved my life… Thank you,” Lilly breathed out, not sure if he could understand her or not, but feeling the need to show gratitude for killing creatures she had thought were indestructible.

It didn’t slip her frazzled mind the amount of strength it would have taken to drive a blade into the hardest part of their armored skin.

The man scoffed, his lip curling into a smirk. Then he grabbed her shoulders, his grip like steel, and she felt a shiver run down her spine at the contact.

He brought his face closer to hers, and there was an inquisitive glint in his gaze.

And then he spoke, and his deep voice made her quake where she stood.

“You are coming with me, human.”