Nearly forty minutes later, tremors unsettled the basement goods and the family's nerves. Clayton's mother clung to her son to protect him, and his father did the same to his wife. They kept close eyes on the ceiling, waiting to see if it would cave in on them.
The tremors were minor at first, about as strong as the rumblings caused by the military cargo craft that made frequent trips overhead. They hoped that these tremors came from the usual source. But as the tremors became stronger, Clayton made two assumptions: either an Air Force cargo plane was on a crash course for their neighborhood, or one of those creatures was paying them a visit. An earthquake was a logical explanation, too, but his home state was seismically quiescent.
The first casualty to gravity was the radio. It landed with a crash that would have suggested the end to the old device, yet it continued to play. Rods leaning against a wall tipped over, and the stack of blow-up boxes collapsed. Clayton was forced closer to the cold ground thanks to his mother, who was in turn covered by her husband. Clayton didn't feel safer with the weight of his parents pressing him down, and it annoyed him; though his heart was running a marathon, he was morbidly curious to see if his ceiling would break apart before his eyes. At least then, he'd know why everything was dark all of a sudden and he couldn't move.
“It'll be okay, sweetie. Everything'll be all right.” Clayton knew his mother's words were for him, but he couldn't help but think that they were more for her own reassurance.
After having been caught in tremors for too long, Clayton and his family heard the familiar sound of a military aircraft soaring overheard. Except that this aircraft didn't roar like the typical cargo crafts but whined like a fighter jet. Its engines were deafening, as though it were flying lower than what safety protocols would condone.
As its whine dropped after having reached its highest pitch, the undeniable thunder of an explosion ripped through the air. It was loud, easily triumphing over the jet's engine. Clayton plugged his ears after wincing from the sudden blast. He planned on keeping his fingers in his ears, since he heard what sounded like a second and maybe a third jet trailing behind the first. But he permitted sound after hearing something unfamiliar, something that sounded...alive.
He listened carefully to that sound, plugging his ears when a second and third explosion tore through the air and knocked over a reindeer frame. The sound was sad, like some animal crying for a number of reasons: sorrow; frustration; pain. He almost felt bad for the creatures emitting such sad moans. Hearing their death-filled cries reminded him of an article he'd read. It said that rats were responsible for destroying or contaminating up to 40% of food and how billions was spent each year killing off the rodents in an endeavor to lower that percentage. Clayton felt bad for the rats, but he understood why they were killed off. And just like the rats, the pale eyeless caterpillars born from the landfills, for the survival of humanity, had to be killed.
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