It was past midnight in San Francisco. The long hilly streets were slick and reflective with water, stained with glowing streaks of red and green from the traffic lights overhead. A fog had crept in after sunset, streaming silently over the skyscrapers and through the avenues of remodeled Victorian suburbs like a slow-motion waterfall. The chill moisture lingered in the air like acidic velvet, soft and brutally cold, burning against his face and creeping down into his lungs with every breath.

  Through the gray mist shone the moon, reflecting in the streets. Not the old moon… the new moon. The alien’s moon. People had named it ‘Rune’ and it hung as big as a man’s fist in the sky, bigger and closer than the old Luna had. And it was bright; it cast shadows. Its pale gray surface was covered with lines and weird cryptic circles and glyphs, which had given it its name.

  The old moon, the original moon, had broken up when Rune arrived… and now formed a faint ring around the earth, a ghostly white rainbow across the sky from east to west, with Earth’s shadow across it in the middle of the night. Earth’s new ring was barely visible through the night-time fog. Out of the misty gloom a man walked, his long gray overcoat streaked with mist and rain, glistening against the distant electric lights. His hair was equally wet, hanging stringy and ignored into his eyes, long enough to be about three months past his last haircut. He walked like a man haunted… or hunted. Occasionally he glanced back over his shoulder, back the way he’d come, or toward some sudden burst of sound. His eyes, focused and dark, burned with a fever-bright intensity. His face and unshaved jaw were just as tense.

  Strange voices rang through the fog from a distance, amplified eerily by the moisture. Not really human. Laughter both heart-felt and obscene, grotesque words that buzzed just beyond understanding. Lewd shouts and catcalls which carried over the hiss of tires against the asphalt and the sluggish wind rustling the park trees. It was a continual party in San Francisco… but it wasn’t the human locals celebrating.

  “Bastards,” he whispered, turning in a circle as he walked to glare behind him, heedless of the puddles and litter beneath his shoes. “Fucking bastards.”

  Over the muffled cacophony of jeering laughter, a strange sound began very quietly in the distance, discordant and metallic, then built in volume like an electric guitar string tightened to the point of breaking. He looked past the buildings at the orange-stained fog which filled the sky, searching out it’s origin. Suddenly, with a mechanical scream, the horrible noise broke loose and washed across the sky from north to south. A strange ripple followed it through the clouds, agitating the fog like an invisible shock wave. It was followed by a new chorus of grating, shrieking laughter in the city, a cry of celebration.

  The freaks had done something… broke something… and they were happy about it.

  “Damn you all,” the man whispered viciously, and stepped away from the streets into the ominous darkness of the city park.

  Ten steps later under the slowly dripping eves of the eucalyptus trees he felt it; a cold, creeping danger in the shadows ahead. The feeling of horror seemed to leak outward like a chemical spill, absorbing into his very skin and making the nerve ends fire off with bursts of tingles.

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  Instantly he came to a stop, staring fixedly into the darkness below the trees. His hand slid slowly under his jacket even as his eyes searched for some hint of movement or shape to mark the creature ahead. The creature he knew was there.

  “David,” it breathed, a growl like a beast, colder than death.

  “Fuck you,” he replied, his voice gone quiet and strained. “I know what you are.”

  “David,” it whispered again and the shadows shifted.

  “Fucking don’t move!” David jerked the gun out from beneath his jacket a moment before he heard the snap of twigs and leaves somewhere in the shadows. He hesitated, swallowing with a dry throat. It crept nearer, brushing through leafy bushes, each step crackling more foliage, but he couldn’t see it yet.

  “So, you’ve got yourself a body, do you?” He stepped back slowly, keeping his gun leveled in the general direction of the movement. “What is it, huh? Some bum? You going to try to make me shoot some bum?”

  As it crept nearer he could see to his vast relief that it wasn’t nearly as tall as a man. Rather it moved like a large beast, close to the ground, with the glint of inhuman eyes. David pointed his gun at it more steadily, lifting his chin half an inch with challenge.

  “We know who you are,” the Thing growled, smug and careless of his weapon. “A terrified little boy. Mortal, weak, pathetic.”

  “I’ll give you one chance. Leave that thing and go bury yourself in a hole… or I’ll take it from you.”

  “You can’t hurt me, David,” the creature crept out onto the path, becoming distinct as a huge, scruffy stray dog. It was rabid, slobber hanging from its jaws, its sides so lean every rib could be counted. With silent, feral intensity its hackles raised and its massive teeth parted in anticipation of its attack. “I’m immortal, like you can never be. Put down the gun and swear to serve me and I can make you more than you ever dreamed.”

  “Go to hell.” He squeezed the trigger, clipping the dog in the side even as it lunged. It let out a howl of pain as the gunshot rang across the city, the sound bouncing against the faces of the buildings before it was eaten by the fog.

  The dog landed a couple of feet from him, its side wet with blood. It thrashed onto its paws to lunge at him again with gaping jaws. He fired and fired again, emptying five bullets into its corpse as he backed away.

  The trees sighed and shivered with a quiet gust of wind as the echoes died, and spatters of drips rained down from their branches.

  David stared shakily at the dead animal, at its blood and its fixed, empty eyes. Carefully he lowered the gun and then slipped it back into the holster he wore in the small of his back. “You can stop trying to recruit me, you little shits,” he yelled into the night around him, turning in a circle to glare at every shadow and branch. “I know what you do to people!”

  ‘Fool,’ something whispered. It wasn’t audible this time, more like a buzzing just inside his chest, the center of his chest which acted like an amplifier. Where he could hear Them.

  “Go away!” he screamed and took off running, his jacket whipping out behind him as he abandoned the park.

  ‘We could give you power like you’ve never imagined. Idiot! We could make you like a god!’

  David ran harder, bursting out of the far side of the narrow park and sprinting across the wet street. A car hit its breaks with a furiously honking horn but he didn’t even spare it a glance. Instead he just kept running, further into the residential avenues, then aside into the Haight Ashbury district.

  A few late night places were still open; bars and filthy adult theaters. Everywhere he looked he could see Them lurking just out of sight, sometimes behind people’s eyes as they stared at him.

  “Hey, where you going?” someone yelled, but David ignored them. He just kept running, and running… and running.