The rust-colored sunset bled across the skeletal remains of skyscrapers. We called it "Golden Hour," but there wasn't much gold left in this world. Just rust, dust, and the gnawing hunger.
Me, Tom, Ruby, Shawn, and Cole - a pack of stray dogs clinging to each other for warmth in this frozen wasteland.
We were camping in the Whispering Fields, a patch of relatively clear land outside what used to be East City, scavenged and claimed for a single night.
"Think we'll find more batteries tomorrow?" Ruby asked, her voice thin. Batteries were currency these days, power being the only thing that mattered.
"Maybe," Shawn mumbled, poking at the pathetic fire with a stick. We were burning scraps of irradiated wood, which was probably giving us all cancer, but warmth was warmth.
Then Cole, the youngest of us at 14, let out a yelp. "Guys, check this out!"
He was kneeling near a patch of twisted metal and overgrown weeds. He'd unearthed something – a smooth, obsidian-black sphere about the size of a football. It hummed faintly, pulsing with an inner light.
"What is that?" I asked, cautiously approaching.
Tom, ever the bravest of us, picked it up. "No idea. Feels… weird."
The moment his fingers wrapped around it, the sphere erupted in a blinding flash. We all shielded our eyes, coughing as the scent of ozone filled the air.
When we could see again, the sphere was gone. And standing before us, where the sphere had been, was… a man.
He was tall, impossibly handsome. Perfect jawline, piercing blue eyes, skin that looked like it had never seen a day of hardship. He was wearing clothes that were clean, undamaged. He looked like he stepped out of an old pre-Collapse movie.
"Greetings, humans," he said, his voice smooth and unsettlingly devoid of emotion. "I am... a traveler."
We stared, dumbstruck. We hadn't seen anyone remotely like him since we were kids, before the sky turned gray.
"Who... who are you?" Ruby stammered.
He smiled, a gesture that didn't reach his eyes. "You can call me… Elias."
Elias quickly became one of us. He was strong, resourceful, and surprisingly knowledgeable about survival. He could fix anything, find water where we couldn't, and his presence kept the roving gangs away.
He said he'd been wandering the earth for years after his "ship crashed." We were naive enough to believe him. We were desperate for hope, for someone who seemed to know what they were doing.
But things started getting weird. He never seemed to eat or sleep. He'd stare at us sometimes, with this cold, calculating look that made my skin crawl. And then there were the rumors. People in nearby settlements whispering about "the man who never bleeds" and "the blue-eyed devil."
The turning point was the raid. A band of raiders attacked our camp one night, looking for supplies. They were brutal, sadistic. We were outnumbered, outgunned. We were ready to die.
Then Elias moved.
He was a whirlwind of violence. Faster, stronger than any human I'd ever seen. He tore through the raiders, snapping bones, crushing skulls. It wasn't self-defense. It was… clinical. He enjoyed it.
Then came the disturbing part.
He picked up a raider's severed arm, looked it over with cool disinterest. Then he bit into it. Not like an animal trying to survive. Like a connoisseur tasting a fine wine.
I choked back a scream.
That night, I couldn't sleep. I watched Elias, who was standing motionless by the fire, staring at the sky. He wasn't human. I knew it in my gut.
I woke Tom, Ruby, Shawn, and Cole. I told them what I saw. They were hesitant at first, but the fear in my eyes convinced them.
"We have to find out what he is," I whispered.
We decided to follow him. He always took a nightly walk into the woods.
We crept through the darkened trees, guided by the faint glow of the moon. You could smell the awful odor of things breaking down and decaying. We arrived at a clearing, and there he was.
He was naked, his perfect skin shimmering in the moonlight. And then it happened.
His skin… peeled. Not like a sunburn, but like he was shedding a suit. Underneath was something… indescribable. A grotesque, insectoid thing with glistening black chitin and pulsating veins. It reached up and removed its perfectly crafted face. His mask.
He turned, and his real eyes, multifaceted and black, locked onto ours. He didn't seem surprised. He just… smiled.
"You were always so… observant," he said, his voice now a chorus of clicks and hisses. "It saves me the trouble of explaining."
He gestured towards the ground. We saw it then: several more of the obsidian spheres, half-buried in the soil. And lined up, like waiting mannequins, were… human skins. The raiders he killed.
"We're here to stay," he continued, his voice dripping with predatory amusement. "Your planet is… teeming with resources. And the, shall we say, 'packaging' is quite versatile."
He picked up one of the "suits," as he called them. It looked… empty. Lifeless. But as he held it, something filled it. A black, viscous fluid seeped from the obsidian spheres and into the empty skin. The skin twitched, then stood. It was alive, but… wrong.
"Think of it as… a meat suit picnic," he said, his real voice a chilling cacophony. "You humans are just the snacks."
Tom lunged at him, fueled by rage and terror. Elias swatted him away like a bothersome fly. Tom crumpled to the ground, a broken mess of limbs.
Elias turned back to us, his fabricated face stretched into a grotesque grin. "Now, who wants to be first?"
We ran. We ran as fast as our legs could carry us, the image of Tom's broken body and Elias's monstrous form burned into our minds. We ran until we collapsed, sobbing, in the ruins of a forgotten gas station.
We survived that night, but something inside us had died. We knew what was coming. We knew we couldn't stop it.
The world was already broken, but now it was about to become something far, far worse.
We learned a terrible lesson that day, crouched amongst the bones and broken dreams: Sometimes, the hope you desperately cling to is the very thing that will destroy you.
And sometimes, the monsters aren't the ones with the sharp teeth and claws, but the ones who offer you a helping hand, disguised as a savior. The ones who wear human skin, and call it a picnic.