THE GIRL IN THE SILENCE

Our truck was the only thing moving in the dead city.

I drove, trying to ignore my friend freaking out next to me. Dude was practically vibrating. Outside, the sky was this permanent messed-up red. All the buildings were just… frozen. Malls, apartments, everything perfect but empty. No people, no birds, no nothing. Just the Red Silence.

“Bro, stop!” my friend hissed, pointing. “Look!”

I didn’t slow down. “We don’t stop. That’s the first rule.”

“Just look! By that busted shop!”

I glanced. Saw a shape curled up in a doorway. “It’s a bag. Or one of those… Fallen things. Chill.”

“It moved! I swear it moved! What if it’s a person?”

“There are no people out here,” I said, my voice flat. “There’s the Red, and then there’s the Blue Sky when things fall. That’s it.”

But his face was all desperate hope. I did the math in my head—risk vs. reward. With a sigh, I killed the engine.

The silence was absolute. Creepy.

I grabbed my rifle and got out. My boots crunched, the only sound. I walked toward the doorway.

It was a girl.

She was curled up, shivering, wearing basically rags. Dust covered her. She looked up, and her eyes locked onto mine. Dark, and sharp.

I didn’t say anything. Just shrugged off my jacket and held it out.

She stared at it. Then, real slow, she took it and pulled it on. It drowned her.

My friend came rushing up. “Oh my god, you’re alive! Are you okay? What’s your name? Where are you from?”

The girl looked at him. Her voice was rough, like she hadn’t used it in ages. “I’m fine.”

“But where did you come from?” he pressed. “Which safe zone?”

She looked away. “Doesn’t matter.”

I kneeled down. “It does matter. Who are you? Why are you out here alone?”

She looked right at me, her face a closed door. “I’m not talking about that.”

“You have to give us something,” I said.

“I just did. I said I’m not talking about it.” Her tone was final. She was answering, but saying nothing.

My friend looked hurt. “We’re trying to help you.”

“Then help me by not asking,” she said, and pulled the jacket tighter.

We got her into the back of the truck. My friend kept shooting her confused looks. She just stared ahead, a silent wall.

We started driving. My head was spinning with new calculations: our supplies, the danger of a stranger, the mystery of a girl who could talk but refused to tell us anything real.

We were still a few blocks from our base, in the shadow of the taller, dead buildings, when the world went dark.

A shadow, massive and wrong, covered us. I looked up.

A pigeon. But a nightmare pigeon. The size of a car, feathers nasty and greasy. It circled with a sound like tearing metal, then dove.

“PUNCH IT!” I yelled.

My friend slammed the gas. The truck lurched as giant talons scraped the road right behind us.

The thing shrieked and came back around, aiming for the truck bed. Aiming for her.

I scrambled out the window, onto the roof. The wind whipped my face. The bird swooped past, and I jumped.

I landed on its gross, oily back. It stank. The bird freaked out, bucking hard. I held on, pulling out my knife. I stabbed down.

The blade hit something hard and snapped.

The pigeon screamed, rolled, and I lost my grip.

I fell.

Sky, ground—a red blur. I hit the truck bed with a crash that blasted the air from my lungs. Pain exploded in my side.

I looked up, gasping. The monster was diving again, its jagged beak wide open.

Then I heard it. A deep THOOMF.

I turned my head.

The girl was standing up, my jacket flapping. On her shoulder was an RPG launcher. Smoke curled from the tube.

She didn’t blink.

The rocket hit the pigeon in the head.

SPLATCH. Black goo and feathers. The head was gone. The body crashed next to us with a thud, twitched, and died.

Silence rushed back in, ringing.

My friend was staring. “You… you killed it.”

I pushed myself up, everything hurting. I looked from the giant corpse to the girl. She lowered the RPG, her face calm.

“No kidding,” I grunted. I looked right at her. “Put. It. Back.”

She held my stare. Then, slowly, she placed the RPG back in the truck bed.

My friend was already moving. He grabbed the radiation scanner from under his seat. In this world, you check everything. He pointed the gun-shaped device at the pigeon’s massive, still-warm breast and pulled the trigger.

A low hum. The screen lit up with green text.

SCAN COMPLETE - ORGANIC MASS
CAUSE OF GIGANTISM: AMBIENT RADIATION (HISTORICAL)
CURRENT RADIATION LEVEL: 0.8 Sv/hr
FOOD SAFETY THRESHOLD: <1.0 Sv/hr
CONCLUSION: WITHIN EDIBLE PARAMETERS.

“Whoa,” my friend breathed, looking from the screen to the mountain of meat. “It’s… it’s safe. It’s just big. We could eat for months.”

That’s when we heard it.

First, a sharp, broken cry from somewhere close. An alley, maybe. Or a rooftop.

Then, a wail of pure grief, tearing through the red silence.

“NO! NOT MY BIRD! NOT MY BEAUTIFUL BIRD!”

A guy’s voice, cracking with pain, joined in. “What did you DO?!”

We couldn’t see them. But we could hear them crying—hard, messy, devastated sobs. The sound of someone who’d just lost everything. The sound of people mourning a pet.

We stood there, frozen, looking at the gigantic, edible bird we had just murdered, and listened to its owners weep in the shadows.