The night carried a silence too deliberate.
Not the silence of emptiness, but the kind that waits.
We made camp in the husk of an old fuel station, its sign melted into unreadable metal. The boy's glow had grown stronger. Karis bound his arms with strips of cloth, hoping to mask it, but faint red light bled through. The veins in his skin pulsed like threads of fire, flickering in time with his heartbeat.
Harlan sat apart from us, pistol resting across his lap. He never took his eyes off the boy. Each time the glow brightened, his jaw tightened.
I didn't sleep. None of us really did.
That's when I heard it.
A clattering, distant at first. Like loose stones rattling inside a hollow drum.
Karis lifted her head, eyes wide. "Do you hear that?"
The sound grew louder. Rhythmic. Intentional.
And then it came again, closer.
Click. Clatter. Click.
Bones.
---
First Glimpse
They appeared at the far end of the road, moving slowly through the ash.
Tall, impossibly thin. Draped in strips of pale, torn skin like ceremonial robes. Bones jutted unnaturally from their shoulders and spines, sharpened into grotesque spears. Their arms dangled long, ending in hands like claws — not nails, but exposed marrow hardened into points.
One carried a bundle strapped to its back. Bones lashed together with tendon and wire: ribs, femurs, skulls. When it walked, they clattered against one another like macabre wind chimes.
The sound we had heard.
The Bone Harvesters.
The first one stopped, tilting its head. It had no eyes, only hollow sockets where something glistened wetly. But I felt it see us.
Others stepped into view — six, seven, more. Emerging from beneath burned cars, crawling from alleys, rising from ash dunes. All carried bones. All clicked and rattled with every step.
The boy whimpered and the glow beneath his skin brightened.
The Harvesters stopped.
And then they shrieked.
---
The Hunger
Their scream was no roar of rage. It was hunger — but not for flesh.
For bone.
They rushed at us, moving with jerking, spiderlike speed. Their limbs cracked as they lunged, each motion punctuated by the clatter of the trophies bound to their frames.
Harlan fired first. Bullets tore through one's chest, splintering ribs — but instead of falling, it stumbled forward, arms outstretched, as if eager to harvest the fragments newly freed.
Karis clutched the boy and pressed him against the ground. His glow made us targets.
I grabbed a pipe from the wreckage and swung as one lunged. The pipe connected with its jaw, snapping it sideways. Bone splintered under the blow, sharp shards flying. But the thing didn't stop. It only screeched louder, reaching with claws toward my ribs.
They weren't predators of flesh. They wanted what was beneath.
---
Harlan's Fall
One Harvester tackled Harlan, claws digging into his chest. He screamed as it began prying at his ribcage, its skeletal hands pulling like tools.
"Help!" he howled, firing point-blank into its skull. Bone fragments exploded — but the monster didn't die. It only leaned closer, tugging harder.
I drove my pipe into its side. The impact cracked open its spine, spilling loose vertebrae onto the ground. The Harvester shrieked and collapsed, still clawing blindly.
Harlan scrambled up, blood soaking his shirt, clutching his side. His eyes were wide with animal terror.
"Don't let them take me," he gasped. "Don't let them take me."
---
Into the Pit
We fled into the ruins, the Harvesters clattering behind us. The boy's glow lit our path faintly, painting us as prey.
Then the ground collapsed.
The floor of an abandoned lot gave way beneath our feet, and we plummeted into darkness.
We landed hard, bones crunching beneath us. Not ours. Old ones. A pit filled with brittle skeletons, half-buried in ash.
The stench of rot and dust choked me. The boy sobbed weakly, his glow illuminating skulls piled high around us.
And then I realized: this was where the Harvesters stored what they took.
Their nest.
---
The Cage of Bones
It wasn't just bones.
There were bodies too — half-consumed, ribcages cracked open, skulls stripped clean. Some corpses still clung to scraps of flesh, their jaws frozen in eternal screams.
And among them — survivors.
Three of them.
They were bound with crude straps made of bones fused together. One man was missing a leg below the knee, another's arm was gone entirely. The third, a woman, still had all her limbs, but her skin was carved with shallow cuts where bones had been measured for extraction.
They stared at us with hollow eyes. Not joy at rescue. Only horror.
"Leave," one rasped. "You shouldn't have come here."
---
The Bone King
From the shadows at the far end of the pit, something stirred.
It was larger than the others, hunched and towering. Its chest was split open like a cage, filled with rattling bones. Spines, ribs, skulls, all clacking together with every shuddering breath.
The Bone King.
It stepped forward, the walls of the pit trembling beneath its weight. Its head was a mask of fused skulls, its claws longer than swords.
It opened its chest cage wide. Bones rattled loose, spilling into the pit.
And it reached for us.
---
The Fight
Harlan screamed and fired until his gun clicked empty. Bullets shattered the King's ribs, but the beast only leaned closer, claws curling around him.
"Not me!" he shrieked, thrashing. "Not me!"
The King dragged him close, claws digging into his torso. Harlan howled as bone cracked, his ribs tearing away. Blood sprayed, his scream cutting off into wet gurgling.
The boy screamed too, his glow surging until his entire body pulsed with firelight. For a heartbeat, the Bone King recoiled, its empty sockets narrowing.
Karis pulled the boy close, whispering frantic words. I don't know if she was praying or begging him to stop glowing.
I lunged at the King with my pipe, stabbing it into the cage of bones in its chest. Splinters sliced my arms, but I drove it deeper, cracking the cage.
With a deafening shriek, the King collapsed, spilling its hoard across the pit. Bones rained down like hail.
The other Harvesters above shrieked in unison.
But for the moment, the pit was ours.
---
A Choice in the Dark
We cut the survivors free. One collapsed, too weak to move. Another sobbed, clutching her mutilated arm. The third — the one missing a leg — only whispered, "You should have left us. They don't stop. They always come back."
Karis ignored him, trying to tend to their wounds with trembling hands.
I looked at the boy. His glow had dimmed, but faint fire still pulsed beneath his skin. The rescued survivors stared at him in terror.
"He's changing," one whispered. "He's one of them."
"No," I said sharply. "He's alive."
But inside, I felt the same doubt that haunted Harlan's eyes.
---