The red sun beat down, hot and heavy, through the thick atmosphere. I scanned the ruins carefully, moving as quietly as I could from cover to cover, but not trying to 'sneak' per se. We had learned that actively sneaking actually attracted their attention. Furtive movements and hesitation seemed to scream 'prey' to them. So I moved quietly, but confidently, staying inconspicuous but never hiding.

We never found out how they turned the sun red. It had something to do with a thicker ozone layer, with blocking the UV rays of the sun, but we don't know how they did it. We only know that once the sun turned red, the day was no longer safer than the night, and they stopped pretending they didn't exist. They still aren't very numerous, and they don't kill that many of us, I guess. But we don't know how to kill them at all, and driving them off is hard enough, with silver and garlic and all that. Wooden stakes are pretty useless, they break in the creatures' tough hide. Silver burns them, they don't like the feeling...but it doesn't cut, and if it isn't pure it does literally nothing. So we grow a lot of garlic, and make perfumes, and repellent sprays. But if you put it on too thick, they notice it from a long way off and get ticked . . .so they find ways to hurt you from a distance, just to discourage that as a solution.

So we live moment to moment, in a world defined by avoiding their attention, and they take what they need from the unwary and unwise. We build high walls that don't really slow them down, but we line them with moats of fresh running water on both sides. That mostly keeps them out. Mostly. But if the water isn't clean for some reason, it doesn't work, so maintenance is super important...and exposes the person doing the work. Plus we still have to forage for food, supplies, things we can't grow in the small areas we can protect with moats. Sometimes, if we're super lucky, we have a generator and can power a UV spotlight for local defense.

I was out looking for salvage, for things we could use to keep our generator running, for materials to make filters for the water, for salt, for cheesecloth, for netting...which brought me to the abandoned coastal town I was not exactly slinking through. My hope was that this was far enough out that they didn't hunt here.

As I bent down over the rusted remains of an old transformer, hoping to salvage some of the wires, or at least the copper inside, I heard something that made my blood run cold, my heart beat faster. A low chuckle, not quite human sounding, sibilant, hissed past teeth that never quite let the mouth close.

“I knew one of you would come looking for sscrapss here, “ the thing said, its voice low and gravelly, with those long s sounds. “Lunchtime.”

My last thought, as I was taken, almost gently, in that unbreakable grip, was, 'Shit. Not enough garlic.'

And then darkness.