Schadenfreude

"We've got to get out of here, they'll be on us any second!"
The crumbling brick offered little protection from the sounds of gunfire and haze of smoke that covered the ruins of Berrington. The war had taken a long, deadly toll on the peaceful citizens, decimating most of the settlers before any of them could even grab what meager weapons they owned. It was hell to most of them. They'd come here for a new start, new worlds and a new opportunity to see what no one had ever seen. When the announcement had come, millions flocked to the recruitment centers, desperate to get out of the horrid conditions of the few remaining cities that littered the Dying Continents. SO many died in the last few wars over what remained, and even those that were left were scraping by.

The riots were bad in the beginning, until they started culling. Anyone caught fighting were taken to the Fields and left. Few returned and when they did, they never made it to the front of the line. Still it deterred few from trying to edge up a place in line. Ultimately, the culling got to the point that if you so much as jostled someone, you were taken away and not seen again.

There were only fifteen hundred spots on the First Flight. The colony had been established long ago as a simple exploratory outpost, but had been repurposed to hold more than its normal capacity. In theory, it would eventually hold over a billion, resources permitting. The rules were strict, and rationing was mandatory. Anyone caught taking more than his fair share was ejected to the harsh landscape- a death sentence. Still, after a few such incidents, the flow of normalcy established itself and the colony began to grow, adding land and new refugees in.

That was until they came. The colonists called them the "Schadenfreude", because they never killed any of the people , merely took them into their hovering platforms and did things. The truth about what was happening to the captured was a mystery. No one had escaped to confirm, so the stories that circulated amongst the terrified survivors weren't the truth. The horrors were whispered in secret meeting places, hiding from the prying senses of the unseen enemy.

A few of the demons -for that is truly what they felt like- had been wounded but a confirmed kill was never established. You could hear them if you really listened, chattering to each other and scratching the ground with claws that could tear a child from its mother's arms without her having to let go. They came through walls, cars, even fortified bunkers. If they found you, you belonged to them. They wouldn't snatch you away either, they would touch you, and slowly pull you away from your loved ones as they helplessly tried to hold you. That's how they got their name.

Gerard Holdsten described the incident where he lost his sister to me as we hunkered down in our temporary shelter..

"Like trying to grab a ghost, a ghost of the people you love, taken from yo right in front of you, sometimes as you held onto their hand you could feel them fading. And all the time, all you could see of them was that smile, that mock-human smile, the more you hurt, the more they smiled. I'll never shake that, not as long as i live."