GAME OF LOVE: Olivia Reid

Bang!

The door slammed shut behind her.

Rain poured down in sheets. The sound of that door was a coffin lid falling into place.

In Ivy's arms, her three-day-old daughter weighed almost nothing at all.

On either side of her stood her other two girls--eight-year-old Aria and six-year-old Layla--pressed close together, barefoot. Their tender little feet were already torn open by the gravel, thin red lines threading between their toes, but neither of them cried out. There wasn't time to.

One second they'd been inside. The next, Ivy's husband Adrian and the woman who'd appeared out of nowhere--Maya--had shoved them out the door.

No warning. No explanation. Not even shoes.

"Adrian!"

Bang, bang, bang!

Ivy pounded on the door. Maybe she hit it too hard--the baby stirred against her chest and let out a thin, trembling wail, almost swallowed whole by the rain.

The city outside was already a ruin. Monsters no one could explain had swallowed every corner of it, the grid had collapsed along with everything else, and if this tiny body--three days old, three days of existence in this world--didn't get somewhere warm soon, she would freeze. She would die in her mother's arms.

How was a woman who'd just given birth supposed to accept that?

Ivy had nothing left but a broken, pleading whisper. "Adrian, open the door. Please. Your daughters will freeze out here."

What came back was flat, cold, indifferent. "Those are your daughters. Not mine. I don't need them. Take them and go, Ivy."

This was Adrian. The man she'd loved more than anyone, once known better than she knew herself.

And this was how he looked at them now.

"You can't do this to me, Adrian." Ivy's voice shook, the words dragged out through sobs. "This house is mine. My parents left it to me."

She never talked like this. She'd never wanted to wound his pride--not even a month ago, when she'd learned the truth: that he'd been unfaithful for years, that his son with another woman was older than her own eldest daughter.

Even then, she hadn't said a word like this.

But whoever was behind that door clearly didn't care. Maya's voice drifted out, laced with amusement.

"Ivy, sweetheart, don't be naive. It's the apocalypse now. Whoever can hold onto something, keeps it. This is our home now."

Then came a child's voice--young, but venomous, carrying ten years of quiet contempt.

"Yeah. Why would we waste food on you people? Useless people should just do everyone a favor and die."

What was wrong with this child?

Ivy stood frozen, unable to process what she'd just heard.

She'd been devastated by her husband's affair. She hated Maya for the way she'd waltzed into their lives.

But she had never once blamed the boy. She was the one who'd fought to get Jake into the best school in the neighborhood.

The night he ran a fever, she was the one who sat up with him until dawn.

When the older boys at school cornered him, she was the one who marched into the principal's office and made them answer for it.

She'd told her own daughters, again and again: no matter what, he's your brother.

And now the very hand she'd once offered him was turned against her own children.

Was this--all of this--somehow her doing?

She rested a hand on each of her daughters' heads, her eyes filled with an apology she couldn't voice.

Layla was still young enough to believe in things like family. Still young enough to believe in love.

With trembling fingers, she pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of her soaked pajamas. The rain had already smeared the colors into a blur, but the picture was still recognizable--a tall boy holding the hands of two little girls, drawn in the wobbly, earnest lines of a six-year-old giving it everything she had.

Beneath it, in crooked letters: I love you, Jake.

"Jake... do you really hate us that much? I made you a picture..."

But reality rarely cared what anyone deserved. Adrian's voice came one last time.

"Be realistic, Ivy. The world's changed. The weak just drag everyone else down--that's not cruelty, that's survival. You and those girls consume resources and contribute nothing. And honestly... I never loved you. Maya's the only one I've ever loved. Find somewhere to hide before the monsters find you first."

As if letting them go were some act of mercy.

Ivy would never accept that.

Thud, thud, thud!

She kept slamming her fists against the door, until her knuckles split and bled onto the wood.

Aria couldn't bear to watch her mother carry this alone--she added her small hands to the effort, screaming, trying to shake loose whatever conscience her father had left.

"Dad! Dad! Open the door!"

Layla joined in too, beating the door with both small fists, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe, her strength never faltering.

But no matter how hard they hit, no matter how loud they screamed, the door didn't move.

Not a sound came from inside--as if even acknowledging they existed was too much effort.

Ivy didn't have time to dwell on it. The baby's cries were growing weaker, her small body starting to cool.

Aria and Layla's movements were slowing too, their voices thinning to almost nothing as they sank to the ground. "Mom... are we going to die?"

Ivy dropped to her knees and pulled both girls into her arms, murmuring over and over, "No. No, baby, I'm here. It won't happen."

Her tears fell harder than the rain around them, because she knew--this promise, the one she always made to soothe them, might not hold this time.

She was the one who'd brought her daughters to this. She owed them more than she could ever repay.

A low growl rolled out of the dark.

The sound of death, finally arriving.

It was the one sound no human wanted to hear. It came from somewhere ahead, hidden in the black.

Ivy looked up. A pair of eyes ignited in the rain--red, enormous, as if they'd swallowed every scrap of light around them.

Then a second pair. A third.

Getting closer.

"Mom!"

Aria and Layla screamed together, throwing themselves against Ivy's sides on instinct.

The footsteps kept coming. The first shape emerged from the darkness--a rotting giant, easily sixteen feet tall, arms thick as tree trunks, its nails worn down into blades of black. It moved slowly, deliberately, as if nothing in this world was worth hurrying for.

Ivy's body hadn't recovered from giving birth three days earlier, and she'd spent whatever strength she had left pounding on that door.

She had nothing. No weapon. No strength. But she was a mother, and she spread her arms and stood between the thing and her children anyway.

"Aria, Layla--behind me, now!"

But the monster was faster. Before Ivy could react, a massive hand closed around Aria and wrenched her off the ground.

Eight years old, and she weighed nothing to it--light as a scrap of paper, small arms flailing, reaching again and again for a mother who could no longer answer.

"Mom, help me! I don't want to die! Mom! Mom!"

Ivy ran for her, but the distance was impossible--so short it should have meant nothing, and yet she couldn't cross it.

All she could do was watch the monster raise her daughter toward its open jaws, and scream as she ran.

"Don't! Please, don't hurt her! Aria! Don't be scared, Mom's coming, Mom's right here--"

Crack.

It was such a small sound. That was what made it unbearable--something so quiet, from something so massive.

That tiny, careless motion had taken Aria. Had taken her daughter from her forever.

"Aria!" Ivy's scream tore out of somewhere words couldn't reach. "No--no, no, no! My baby! I'm sorry! This is my fault, this is all my fault--"

Before she could even finish, fate's hand fell again. The monsters weren't planning to spare anyone.

This time it was Layla's turn.

"Layla! No!"

Ivy's foot slipped and she went down hard, her palms tearing open on the gravel. She forced herself up anyway, stretching her arm out, fingers open toward a distance that meant nothing anymore.

This blow didn't kill Layla outright--the creature held her aloft instead, like a toy it found amusing, before driving a claw through her small shoulder.

Layla's scream ripped through the night.

"Mom, it hurts! Mom!"

Then--the same crack as before. Layla's voice drifted further and further away, until it was gone, and her head fell still. Whatever remained of Ivy's soul went with it.

Ivy couldn't even make a sound anymore.

She didn't believe it. Refused to believe it.

It had happened too fast--the kind of fast that still felt like a nightmare she might wake from.

It wasn't until Jake's voice came from behind the door, bright with excitement, that she understood this was no dream.

"Mom, did you see her face? They got crushed like garbage! That was awesome! Her turn now!"

Maya's voice followed, satisfied. "I saw, sweetheart. Finally some peace and quiet. I couldn't stand all that crying--it was keeping us up."

And through all of it, Adrian said nothing at all.

As if the woman he'd married, the three daughters they'd raised together, had never existed.

Ivy had nothing left to fight with. She sank into the wet, ruined ground and let the giants feed on her, clutching her baby's already-stiffening body to her chest, pressing her lips to that tiny forehead.

Tears fell onto the baby's face, one after another, and no sound came out of her at all.

Ivy didn't know if any god was listening. But if she ever got one more chance--just one--she would never again beg at a locked door, never again grovel for someone else's mercy.

She would take the apocalypse into her own hands and turn it into their apocalypse.

No hesitation. No mercy.

The moment Ivy lost consciousness, the wind, the rain, the low wet sound of the monsters feeding--all of it disappeared.

The world went silent. Silent in a way that felt like something, somewhere, was listening.

Ding!

{Host. I've finally found you.}