Seven Days of Destruction
Late in the life of planet Earth, a False god descended from on high.
Man did not know what to make of its arrival – massive as a city, eclipsing their creation with Mythrillic wings, serpentine mouth muddying the ozone with lethal poison. Upon a chariot of hurricanes over the Atlantic Islands, its arrival scorched their beaches, uprooted their jungles, and swept riches and poverty alike into the sea, fated to drown under mile-high surf and the stacked bodies of man and beast sinking one over the other. Yet, truth was softened by hopeful denial; the False god was heralded by international media as little more than the worst weather anomaly in history. It was a natural phenomenon, an environmental karma that demanded the heads of Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean. No one could contact the ships, anyway, so the main headliner that morning had to do with the largest joint insurance claim in history.
Imagine Africa’s surprise when the False god clumsily crashed into Giza with not a single horn of fanfare, braking hard against the pyramids – clearly not a symbol, and with no opinion on capitalism. Steam rollicked down the ridges of its back and streamed in torrents from between its teeth. The figure of the False god was obscured by this excess, but clearly resembled that of a beast of legend – Tiamat, perhaps, maybe even Leviathan or the great Cthulhu? It was these suppositions, these competing opinions, and the mysteriously familiar form of the beast itself that diminished the fear of that initial crowd. They drew nearer, that they might know better who was right.
Reporters from all over the waking globe flocked to the desert to observe and make bank off this unidentified life form, which didn’t seem purposefully hostile to humankind – it only ignored them, like an elephant among ants. Without a word, of which no on was yet certain it was capable to exercise, the monster crawled on its belly towards the Nile. Slow, tired, heaving erratically, its snout drooped gaping into the river.
The False god slept, and all of Africa breathed a shared sigh of relief as they encircled its resting body.
Determined to control airwaves for the sake of nationwide peace and international reassurances, all broadcasting channels sent their government-approved stories out at once. The shout heard round the world was, “Ridiculous!” and even the minute number of unemployed cryptozoologists considered it no greater than the local legendary Mokele-mbembe, drunk on its way back home to the Congo. Still, a cryptid could wait for a headline; show some tact, show some respect for the millions of lives lost in the Atlantic! But what candle did they hold against the fires of Hell, living and breathing in the deserts of Africa? Laughter, derision, a lot of shifting in the mid-executive level, yet still did the news crews hover about the sleeping giant like gnats about a corpse. Insistent upon this beast as more important to human history than any mere natural disaster, they failed to remind themselves that the corpse was not yet safely six feet under. They flocked nevertheless; for this event, was unnatural, which overrides just about every natural thing – tragic, dangerous, or otherwise. Assistance to the Atlantic was the problem of governments, not public interest. Undisturbed by the buzzing news helicopters, the False god slept peacefully through the night.
Thus concluded the first day.
Dawn brought with it rumblings all across Africa. The jungles, the plains, the beaches, every heart thought to be safely tucked away in its ribcage reverberated with the sound of heavy thunder underground. Reporters camped along the Nile’s bank, fearing the False god’s maw agape, backed up so that they wouldn’t be the first item on the menu.
But there was no possibility of escape – skulls were popped, limbs broken, spines cracked inward and organs pierced. Not by any effort made on the False god’s part, for it was still deep in the depths of a divine nightmare. No, the rumbling belonged to a stampede of animals – hundreds of every species, flocking to the beast. As if they could sense dormant evil inside, their animal instincts demanding they take this best chance at survival by attacking while it was asleep, they herded from all corners of Africa to take their one stand against this foreign invader threatening the animal kingdom. Reporters shrieked all around, but the animals paid no mind – they were animals, after all, singularly focused on tearing the monster to bloody pieces. But the many bites from lionesses and more than many prods from rhinos did little more than massacre the curious bystanders; the False god slept soundly along the Nile.
The dragon eventually woke itself with its own sneeze, which blew the Sphinx to rubble and put more than a handful of African species on the extinction list. That fanged grimace split, and the whole Sahara was inhaled right then and there in an absentminded yawn. Some reporters tried to flee across the empty Nile, now drained by the creature like a midnight beer; they sank and were lost to the mud, unable to report just how wrong they were about the False god being an arbiter of environmental justice.
When the False god leaned back on its haunches to recover from the perplexity of waking, it surveyed the rot and was mildly energized. It had only been born yesterday, after all, and was extremely drowsy for ruining more in two days than a whole nation could ruin in a dynasty. Fresh slaughter served as a sort of pick-me-up for it, further provoked by the promise of fulfillment should its current flight plan continue. All day long that whirlwind directed down its throat continued, until all of Africa had been sucked dry and bare as the sands of Giza.
And so it continued, thus ending the second day.
Europe barely had any time to expect the False god, focused more on those premature reports of a wildfire consuming all of Africa in the unquenchable blaze of global warming, and trying their best to keep cinders from crossing over with the north winds. Little did they expect the north winds to actually be the monstrous jetstream of the False God’s indigestion until it collided with the London Eye, tossed its cookies (or, rather, the corpses of Savannah-born scavengers) all across Madrid, and plummeted straight into the Louvre. NATO, immediately chucking France out of the conference on the grounds that it was harboring unregistered weapons of mass destruction that had gotten loose, lobbed all the deadly gases, diseases, and missiles it could manage into the center of Paris. France was given barely any time to understand what was going on, or why they deserved immediate execution. All the time that was left was to raise a nationwide scream of hopelessness as unexpected doom fell from the sky at the behest of their neighborly angels of death. So much powder was used, such a tsunami of smoke poured forth, that the entire continent went dark for the day. With bated breath, all eyes were squinting hard on France.
The smoke spread. And spread. Just when it was thought to have reached its limits, the smoke grasped out even further, choking every population in its wake like a modern Pompeii if the volcano hiked up its skirt and went for a stroll. Soon a dark cloud of radioactive contagious material had blanketed all Europe, from the UK to the Ural Mountains, and communications cut off wherever it enveloped – static from every communicative output. Even those who tried to post on social media from inside the zone were of little help, for their posts were mainly complaints of the overwhelming pain they were in, and their photos were just a black screen under the influence of this new 24/7 perpetual night. Like a new isolated space, Europe disappeared from existence under the swelling ashen sky.
And thusly disappeared the third day.
As teams of international researchers gathered on the outskirts of the UK to inspect the storm, a hole burst open in the center and drew the smoke skywards in a funnel. Up, up, up climbed the False god with death streaming between its wings, clear as day to the rest of the world who had up until this point denied its individuality. The monster marveled at this new art – the art of nuclear apocalypse. With a few flaps, Europe was left behind, no more than a ruin of ignited dusts and viruses filling the lungs of those who still held on to the hope that they would see the sun again – stumbling about in the dark, wails beset by coughs that burned like coals in the chest.
The oases of the Middle East and India were next, and a panic of anticipation threw other countries into chaos; they had finally woken up to the very real end that threatened Earth, whether they still believed in its chosen form or not.
The President of the Russian Federation began to fear that his country was next and so sought the assistance of the United States.
“Madame President,” said one President to the other, “it is in our best interests to strike this thing while it is the Middle East.”
“With nuclear missiles?” probed the other President, still praying the monster was no more than a mass hallucination.
“No. Let us first file a restraining order. We launch the missiles afterwards.”
And so, after a few hours of deliberation and preparation, the two countries sent the False god a formal restraining order strung to the back of a fighter jet, a distraction to prevent it taking notice of the nuclear missiles on the way to intercept it. The False god did not take kindly to the extremely rude tone of the order, so distracted by it that it hardly noticed the following nuclear barrage that wiped out the naturally warring tribes it had just unconsciously united through fear in the Middle East. After massaging its temples, gradually reducing a radiation and legal induced headache, the False god took to the sky yet again.
Thus was the end of the fourth day marked.
The President of the United States received calls for hours from the President of the Russian Federation, who insisted, entreated, demanded, begged, threatened, any way he could phrase a sentence to induce America’s aid. But both Presidents knew that this was a lost cause; they parted on better terms than ever as the False god’s ominous shadow covered Moscow.
Something strange happened in Moscow. While the False god had to this point appeared capable of intelligence, no emotion or self-awareness was noted. Its eyes, too, were obscured in the steam of its immense body heat, so the being operated more like machine than monster with no visible emotion or regard, harboring no remorse or directive but to bring everything its shadow darkened to end. But something strange happened in Moscow: The False God cried. At first the citizens of Russia hoped that the monster had seen the error of its ways, and was cowed by feelings of remorse. They hoped very hard indeed, but those hopes were extinguished as quickly as their lives. The False God’s weeping brought with it tears hotter than the planet’s core, and wails more devastating than a horde of tornadoes. They converged, creating burning winds that tore the very flesh off living skeletons. When the False God’s mourning had done with Russia, Siberia became the capital, as it was the only region not burned bone-dry and streaming with lava. Siberia was the last place fit for human life in all Russia.
Crying all through the night for a reason no one could discern, the fifth day of the False god’s migration came to an end.
Around this time, the United States began to dispose of its nuclear arsenal. It would be devastating if the beast reached them and activated them with its flammable tears. There really was no point to the trove, anyways, since China seemed next on the list.
When the False god circled back down to China, chaos had already burned any bridges of hope. The elites had abandoned their country to the peasantry, and a mass migration of aircraft as numerous as a flock of birds could be spotted fleeing to safe havens in the United States built for the most important members of our global oligarchy. The False God, having already tested its power and stamina, had yet to show off signs of finesse (poor landings made the creature very self-conscious in how it was perceived). This was the perfect opportunity to rectify its image.
It is safe to say the aristo-rats abandoning ship did more than piss their pants upon discovering they were being followed. China apparently wasn’t enough to satisfy a mile-long dragon’s appetite, as it bore down on the flock of planes in seconds. The assailant held no particular ill will against the Chinese – it was merely annoyed they hadn’t waited for its arrival. And so the False god flapped its wings downwards but once, sending hundreds of planes plummeting like a meteor shower upon Japan and Korea. Deciding that Asia was simply too vast and separated to terrorize in a timely manner, the winged beast rerouted to the Arctic. The untouched breathed a sigh of relief, believing that maximum damage had been done and the beast was returning to its place of origin to hibernate. Such was the world order; to divert catastrophes and allow just enough to rebuild civilization anew.
But this was not Godzilla they were dealing with; natural and social orders were the last things on this monstrosity’s mind. A frozen torrent swept from the Arctic and buried all life from the top of China to the bottom of India. Somehow, the False God managed to heat the Northern ice cap and ensure that the resulting meltdown was directed in a single, overwhelming flow. Thus, with Asia plunged below Atlantis, Europe fogged out like a wasps’ nest, and Africa forced to participate in a perpetual barbecue, Oceania was the next natural step. And a step is exactly what the False God took; high, high, upwards did it fly, until – again with this recurring feeling of false hope – survivors all around concluded it must have been an alien, gathering strength to return to its home planet on some cruel star. Man was proven wrong again for thinking positively when their afflicter plummeted from the heavens, a meteor of malicious aim, sticking the landing smack in the center of the Australian Outback. The continent shattered, split from the center outwards until even the Polynesian Islands met with fatal fracture. But this was only the windup for a flying leap, the pressure of which tipped all those disconnected plates over and over like ice cubes in the Pacific.
In a bygone age, not even a week ago, Spring would bring new life – but this was a new era. With a powerful, unnatural spring, a physical jump rather than a temporal one, the False God arrived in South America. With said spring came new death, to overwrite every Spring that had ever been and ban them all to eternal decay.
Thus ended the sixth day. And the False God showed no signs of resting.
Morning's Early Dark 