The Drum did not stop its violence.
Other Unnamed had ceased their attacks on humans unless provoked. This one did not. It continued to kill and hunt them in daylight and moonlight. It preferred the shadows. It was the regular type of Unnamed, a towering black cloud with golden bones and spikes. Its hood was empty of any face or detail. Its back was prickled with points. Its claws were bludgeons and blades. It had survived the countless battles between humans and Reanimated, right up until the Drum’s destruction.
Then, when that song went dead in the abyss that was its mind, the Unnamed could not help but feel regret. It had not properly reanimated anyone. It had tried, over and over again with various victims during the Drum. Still, nobody could be its mouthpiece. A year of strife, rancor, and bloodshed had passed in the booming of the Drum, but the Unnamed still had not gotten what it wanted. There was no communication for it besides violent intention. Now, with the universal motivation of the Drum gone, this Unnamed was an outlier.
It was only a matter of time before humans or Reanimated killed it.
Still, the Unnamed had to try.
The monster lurked in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Minneapolis. The city had been mostly silent during the Drum, but since its destruction more survivors had trickled into the carved out buildings encrusted with green. The Unnamed waited for them in the shadows of debris. Sometimes they were armed and fired into its body as it lunged from the gloom, stabbing and swinging wildly, searching for the killing strike that would shatter its victims. Occasionally, in the confusion of gunfire, bullets struck its ribs or appendages, tearing away some of the dark energy coursing through its abomination veins.
It did not matter.
The Unnamed could still sink into the plants to heal, with or without the Drum. The natural world still favored its kind, and they would always have this relationship.
No human could ever understand.
The Unnamed knew it could not continue to kill, dissect, and rearrange humans for much longer. Other Unnamed who had pursued their old desires and dreams were hunted down by squads of humans and Reanimated. With good reason. The monster could understand why. There had been enough killing. Humans would never be able to completely trust them, even with the Drum gone.
If they knew why they were killed, would they ever understand?
Humans could not comprehend how easy they had it compared to the Unnamed. They could speak. They could communicate. They could talk among themselves in countless languages and sounds. The Unnamed could not do any of this. Some versions could, like the Puppeteer and some of the Gravity, but overall they were voiceless in a world that required speech.
That was where the Reanimated were meant to fill the gaps. They were supposed to be mouthpieces, instruments, and puppets for the Unnamed to communicate with the world. Instead, they became lost, their own entities, and rebelled against their creators. The Unnamed did not know they would have to kill to speak. That was not their original design, and their father, if he were around, might have instructed them differently.
Sadly, he was nowhere to be found.
More flash fiction from my book series the Greenland Diaries. This is from the POV of the lead monster in this story, the Unnamed. You can learn more about the book series right here. There are also other flash fiction pieces I’ve published on here you can read. Thank you for reading my work.
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Patrick W. Marsh 