The Swarm - The Arrival of The Obscured Flame

[Finch]

    The scouts came first.

    It would've been hard to pick them out from the leagues of scavengers and wanderers that roamed Seattle's streets in the daylight. Though, as those scavengers went about their work, they could not help but look at the newcomers and wonder: Who are they with?

    Just some Jackals, the Pasture Kids assumed. Only the Council, the Legion hummed. Only the Boardwalkers. Only the Council. Only some loners.

    By the time the sun came to its highest point in the sky, though, the wanderers all came to the same thought:

    There shouldn't be that many of them.

    The scouts swarmed the roads like ants, scrounging in areas long since left abandoned, finding their way into every corner like locusts. They ate the rot that had been passed over ages ago, and the second wave ate the rot that even the first wave turned away from.

    The mass of bodies filled Seattle like a gas-- imperceptible at first, but too potent to stop, once it was too late. Without proper weaponry, many found themselves dragged off into alleys by the flesh-hungry. But they were not missed. More soon came to fill their vacant places in the swarm.

    The swarm, though, had not yet come. These were merely the scouts, running ahead to found where the food lay.

    The swarm came later, when the autumn sun had already begun to set. In the dusk light, one could have mistaken them for animals, perhaps. A herd of creatures from some unknown land, moving through the streets, filling the roads and alleys and overflowing into the buildings.

    But they were not animals, any kid with a flashlight and enough courage could confirm. They were other children. Thousands of them, driven by some sort of trance in an incomprehensibly large mass. At their head, two horses led the way, their necks clad in blazing red beads, like blazing embers tucked away in shroud.

    Like an Obscured Flame.

    [Not a roleplay thread]