A couple days after the cool autumn sank its toes into the sand, I packed a lunch and rode the bike that Leyla fixed for me west into the desert. I would have preferred to walk, but where I wanted to go couldn’t be reached on foot in a day.
The full water skin slung over my shoulder slapped against my leg as I pedaled across the cracked pavement of the aging highway that cut through the sand. It wasn’t until the sun was straight overhead, beaming down on the old white t-shirt I’d draped along my neck and shoulders—a makeshift keffiyeh to protect my fair, freckled skin—that the dilapidated auto repair shop came into sight.
The standalone building was half-buried in a sand dune. When I’d first found it, it was fully buried, and only the odd square shape of the awning extending out from the roof indicated that there was anything other than more sand underneath. I had marked the place on my mental map, and waited until the winds shifted with the seasons to unearth it again before returning.
I set the bike aside and inched down the hill of sand, carefully prodding with my foot for soft spots indicating there was a treacherous pocket of air waiting for the slightest motion to be filled by the sand above. More than one of our scavengers had been buried alive that way. Not wishing to add to those statistics, I moved slowly, carefully, forward.
But I found no soft spots, and my boots came down on solid ground. I seemed to be standing on the building’s cement foundation, which extended to what must have been a parking lot. Next to me, the dusty glass windows in the garage doors were still intact—a minor miracle in itself. I used my sleeve to wipe away some of the grime then peered through the glass.
I expected the inside to be a mess, and inhaled sharply when the reality proved different. Almost every old building I’d found had been left a mess—no surprise, if you believed the stories that the aliens had colonized Earth in a day. No time to prepare or set your house to rights. Just grab what you can and run run run.
But this place was as orderly as you please. A pile of sand had spilled in through a single broken window, but otherwise the floors were bare. Tool chests were lined up neatly against the wall, and a gas motor Chevrolet was raised a few feet off the floor in one of the bays, where it had surely been waiting years for a service that never came.
Maybe the invaders came on a holiday, when the mechanics were at home with their families. That would explain a lot.
In any case, I pulled my head back and looked around for a way in. I could break this window, but that felt wrong. I wanted to avoid doing damage if possible.
I was pushing sand aside in search of a front door when a deep lowing, barking sound—three sharp gruffs followed by a long guttural moan—drifted into my hearing.
I froze. My blood went as cold as the desert at night. No Earth creatures big enough to make that sound lived in this desert any more. The noise could only belong to one beast.
My scattershot plan of breaking into the garage and raiding it for spare parts scampered back into the recesses of my mind. I would probably be safe inside, but if I made any noise breaking a window or jimmying a door, there was too great a risk that it would bring the creature to investigate.
“Just my luck,” I whispered under my breath. That long trip for nothing!
My bike lay in the sand above me. I would have to scramble quickly up the hill to get to it, running the risk of caving in a soft spot. Or I could stay here and wait it out.
Better to be mobile than trapped in a half-buried auto repair shop. I opted for the bike, scrambling with hands and feet up the steep dune. Halfway up, my foot slipped and my leg plunged in up to my thigh. I flattened my body against the sand, spreading my weight so that I didn’t deepen the hole. Sand filtered into my half-open mouth, but I managed to maintain my presence of mind, carefully extracting my leg from the soft spot. I scrabbled forward until, finally, I heaved my body up on the top next to my bike.
I spat sand as I lifted the bike onto its two chunky wheels, and turned it back east, toward town, the way I had come. I was just throwing my leg over the saddle when the lowing moan came again.
I don’t know what madness came over me in that moment. Somehow, the sound the beast made seemed to be filled with the deepest kind of existential despair.
Judging that the sound still came from a great distance, several hundred yards off at least, I gingerly set the bike back down and crept to the dune’s edge.
It just so happened that beyond this bank of dunes, the desert swept down into a low, flat, cracked-earth plain roughly five miles across. It was littered with boulders and sparse grass, and the occasional low shrub or prickly cactus. On the far end, the land rose sharply into a mountain range.
And there, about half a mile from where I crouched, the creature stood, alone.
The basilisk.
At least, that’s what I had been told to call the massive, lizard-cows the aliens had left behind. They had been described to me, but I had never seen one with my own eyes before.
The creature was massive. It must have weighed two or three tons. Its rotund, scaly body tapered down to a long, whip-like tail. Its massive head hung low, and a hood like you’d see on a cobra pressed down against its neck. According to local legend, when they were angered their hoods flared up.
That’s how you knew you were a goner.
The basilisk pawed at a small boulder with its two front claws, and again made that horribly sad lowing sound that ended on a cracked, plaintive note as it dropped its head.
When its head raised up once more, the small boulder went flying through air. The rock bounced off the ground once, and then the creature charged, its huge mass barreling across the desert at a speed that should have been impossible for its bulk, making the gruff barks I’d heard before in excitement as it chased the boulder like a toy ball.
I shook my head. The thing’s lost its blinking mind!
It was a shame that I hadn’t been able to scavenge any useful parts on this journey, but I wasn’t about to go back for a second try with a loopy basilisk within sniffing distance of me.
I crept away from the edge of the dune, righted my bicycle once more, and pedaled madly home to warn the others.
