Mazikeen
Mazikeen
By Rebekah Clark
I get up from my makeshift bed and wonder why all of this happened, was it just because someone was greedy? Because they wanted gold? Why did they go into the temple? Nobody knows because the one who opened the temple is dead now. A lot of people are dead now, all because of the one guy and his stupid greed.
I get up and start packing up everything that I have. As I walk out of the abandoned house where I’ve been staying, I see a notebook and decide to leave a note in case someone sees it;
“If you come across this note then maybe, just maybe I’m still alive.
I’m heading north and don’t think I’ll be back this way. If you are heading north, I’ve heard that there is safe ground, where the beast can’t get to us, the coordinates are Latitude: 36.047481 Longitude: -79.095006. The date is the 12th of May, 2157
James brook”
I put the note on the door with a pin, and walk away from the house that I’ve been living in for the last day. I never stay in one place for long, it’s too dangerous too. I keep running across abanded homes, but it makes sense because most of the people in north America are dead.
As I walk north all that I can think about is what was happening when I first felt the rumble of the beast, which we now call Mazikeen, because the name means invisible demon according to Jewish mythology.
I’m sitting at home, my mom, dad, and little sister in the living room playing a board game, after the game finished mom went to go start dinner, and dad took Emma to go and have her bath. But before anything happened, an earthquake starts. I run to my mom, and grab her, so I can get her outside of the collapsing house. As we’re leaving, I see my dad carrying Emma in his arms, running right behind us. As we get outside into our yard, one side of the house comes down. We all go to the big willow tree in our front yard, Emma is crying into dad’s shoulder, and we all hope the strangely timed earthquake will settle down soon.
I have been walking for a while, just thinking about the past when I feel a rumble under the ground, I’m in the middle of the road, which is covered in leaves and pine needles, and there are trees along the side of it. I run towards the thickest of the trees and climb it to get off the ground, away from Mazikeen. I’m in the tree and trying to be as still as I can be, wondering if I’ll see the beast that killed my family this time. I’ve never gotten to see it, I only ever got to see the aftermath of its wrath…
“Daddy, what was that?”I hear my sister say to my dad with tears in her eye, I look at him with the same question in my eyes.
“I don’t know sweat pea…” he looks over to me and gives me the same questioning look that I was giving him, “I think it was an earthquake,” he says for comfort after a while of silence.
After a while, we decide to go back inside and assess the damage, as we walk in my mom is still crying, Emma walks over to her and gives a hug to her, but she’s so small that she only reaches up to her waist. Mom picks her up and walks over to the other side of the house to go and check out the rooms
I look over at my dad, and ask, “Do you think that was an earthquake?”
He looks at me and he responds with, “There is no way that that was a natural earthquake.”
The rumbles have stopped. I climb out of the tree, hoping that the beast is far enough away that it can’t feel my footsteps. That’s how it knows where people are, it can feel the footsteps through the ground, through the vibrations. I continue to walk through the forest, on the degrading road that is covered in leaves and pine needles.
I’ve never seen the beast, I was always away when it attacked, I’ve heard about what it looked like, but I don’t actually know what it looks like. I continue walking to the north, through the woods hoping that the thing doesn’t come back, but knowing that it will, I still continue.
It’s been a while since the last rumble, I don’t know when it’ll come back, but usually, there’s not this much time in between when it comes. Thinking about where it is, I get sad and try and shake off what I was thinking about, but I see a movement in the corner of my eye. I turn to look closer, seeing as all that’s left are small animals, birds, and the smart animals/humans, and there, right before my eyes is another person, a tall muscular man that has a tattoo sleeve.
We make eye contact, “hi?”
“Hi, I’m James, what’s your name?” I ask, kinda confused and awkward.
“I’m Charles, where are you from?”
As I’m telling Charles about me, it starts rumbling again, we don’t have anything to climb, all the trees are too small, so we stop moving altogether but it’s no use, Charles hits a button on his belt, I think that it’s a communication device, I hope it is, but I’m not sure. The rumbling gets louder and doesn’t stop, we are probably going to die here.
The rumbling is so loud, louder than it ever was, just as I think that it can’t get louder, it brakes through the surface and I get my first glimpse of Mazikeen, a huge, worm with a corkscrew face with teeth to help it move through the ground, it also has small beady eyes. I’m frozen in my spot, looking at my family’s killer, terrified.
Charles starts running knowing that it can’t feel the vibrations when it’s above the ground and that its eyes don’t work that well, “Come on, let’s get out of here! We don’t have that much time, let’s go!” I’m frozen scared cause I don’t know what to do, Charles sees that I haven’t moved and comes back to grab me, as soon as he grabs my arm, I snap out of it and start running with him, I don’t know where we are going, so I let him lead the way. Mazikeen can’t move on the surface as fast as it can when it is under the ground, so we get away pretty quickly.
I see a house coming up, and ask “where are we going?”
“Away from that thing.”
“Well duh, but do you have a safe place or something?”
“Yes, yes we do, come on, we’re almost there,” he says out of breath as we get deeper into the woods. The trees have gotten thicker, and to the point where I would just stop and climb one. We get to a clearing in the woods and Charles looks up so I look up too, and I see a huge structure, it is basically a huge tree house that spans across multiple trees, it’s beautiful.
When admiring the structure and caching my breath, the rumble starts once again, it followed us to the unknown sanctuary. The people in the trees look over the edge of the makeshift hovering building, they look ready for a fight. They all have some type of weapon, guns, spears, snipers, they all have something. Then I realize that we’re going to fight and kill this thing, once and for all.
Charles takes me over to the stairwell, which is built right into the tree, and we head up. Once there, one of the guys hands me one nice looking gun and says,
“Come fight with us,”
the Reference photo
