Clicks Above the Streetlights

Once the people have left the streets in the late hours after midnight, a new soundscape emerges. It's anxious rabbits finally feeling able to move freely, bugs and crickets produce their calls near the streetlights and lit windows, and the frantic wing-beats of bats flit by quickly. Below the streetlights, there is the quiet hum of electricity, incessant and occasionally interrupted by the desperate click of worn-out circuits. Looking closer, spiders and flies are trapped behind the glass of the lights. It's worse, when it's completely silent. Silent, safe for the clicks of the light.

It used to be, that not many nights keep away both people and animals. It tends to happen more often now, that there are fewer of both around. It's mostly flies and rats. Tonight, not even those have dared to leave their hiding places. Kalina's footsteps on the damp asphalt reverberate through the empty streets. Her form casts long shadows on the road, long since devoid of private cars. She can't hear the thing following her, keeping just out of view with every corner she turns. She has to trust in her ears picking up the subtle clicks of joints, chitin landing on glass, aluminium and concrete tiling, just the tiniest bit lower than the gentle ping of the lights. She pulls her weight up, and over a waist-high fence, drops into unkempt shrubbery, and stumbles out of it, a momentary disturbance of the deafening silence. Once out of the shrubbery, she starts counting seconds against her own steps, waiting. Her mind runs polyrhythmic lines of taps, feet, breath, seconds, until she can hear the slightest rustling of leaves. Twelve seconds. She has a lead of twelve seconds. Her lungs are burning strained. She's been running for almost thirty minutes now. Thirty minutes since she noticed the clicks coming closer over the roofs of the decrepit buildings, barely holding themselves together. At this time of day, few people were foolish enough to open their doors or windows, regardless of the assurances and pleas the visitor might have to offer. It just wasn't worth the risk of having one of them in their home.

She has no real destination to run toward. She's just trying to find a place to hide, preferably with an emergency exit, just in case she couldn't silence her own breath and heartbeat enough to shake her pursuer. She tries her luck in an underground train station, leaping down the stairs two or three at a time. She slows her steps as she arrives at the bottom of the stairs and turns the first corner. She presses herself against the cold orange tiles of the wall, deliberately slowing her breathing. She slowly pushes herself along it, still looking for shadows and listening for clicks that seem too close together to come from the electrical lights. They're everywhere now. Flickering and failing lights, installed ages ago, and deteriorating slowly in the perpetual use and moist weather conditions. The prospect of fleeing into the tunnels isn't unattractive in this moment, and it's certainly something that people have survived in the past, especially since most dark places have fallen into disuse. Her worry is about knowing the tunnels well enough to find her way back out, before it catches up to her. There are enough splits and joins in the tunnels to lose anything that's not directly on her tail. She can hear the clicking of chitinous plates knocking against the aluminium railings and train station tiling. Kalina lowers herself onto the tracks, feet planting themselves carefully on the polished iron rails. She doesn't know whether it would be quieter to step on the boards, than to shuffle along the rails. She just has to guess.

She finds the courage to pick up the pace later, when she's further in the tunnel, and the walls don't echo back the clicking of the long burnt-out service lights. No sign of the creature, no elongated shadow fading into the darkness of the tunnel. She glances downward, but she can't make out any of the details beyond the shiny reflection of metal. There is a gravel covering that would likely alert anything skulking inside the tunnel. She allows herself the soft flops of the modified shoes against the metal as she transitions from careful sliding to stepping. She'll have enough time to leave the tunnels, but she wants to be outside by sunrise. It'll be safe by sunrise, when people can easily see the giant chitinous shells and the snapping mandibles are impossible to ignore. This night is burnt anyways. She had intended to make her way to the next town over, where water is less hard to come by. She doesn't know where she will reemerge now, but until then she just needs to keep moving.

The sun is already up, when Kalina sees an exit. Of course she still needs to be careful, even if she's tired, and she can see the creatures coming, but it's still prudent not to make attract more attention than she needs to. Animals are back out, for what it's worth. Kalina can hear pigeons. It's like they're feigning peace and innocence. Chances are good that the local creature snacked on one or two of them during the night. Kalina climbs over the chainlink fence that separates the tracks from an adjacent field. The plants on it are mostly withered. They weren't meant to grow naturally in this climate. Back, when riding a motorized vehicle didn't put a target on ones back, the owner of the field would have had to make sure to water and spray the crops every other day. Back then, they would have risked cancer or other forms of poisoning. Barely worth the risk then, it's certainly not worth the risk now. She cuts through the field, snapping off the stems and stalks, if they block the path. She passes a skeleton of a tractor, splattered rust-brown on one side. Sometimes there's worthwhile stuff to take along in ruined buildings and vehicles. Not this one, though. Kalina finds torn clothes and a singular rubber boot. There's not even gas.

Kalina took too long to get out of the tunnels. Behind them she found several hectares of desolate farmland. When she sees the sun descending, she finds a place to hunker down between the plants. Somewhere not too dark, but not exposed. She needs to be able to sit still and listen, even though she's even more tired than she was that morning. She slows her breathing and rests. There's nowhere to reach before the sun is down, so all she has left is to listen for the clicks above the streetlights, and prepare to run.