For Gregory, this was the norm - it was all he'd ever known. The most important thing to him, pretty much the only important thing to him, was keeping his family safe. On this morning, he was busy preparing breakfast for his two sons, twins. Things had gotten easier over the years as the encampment grew, but he never got complacent - he knew better.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, and Gregory immediately felt he knew what it was. He was always expecting it, maybe even waiting for it. He gave the boys their food and rustled their hair before going to the door. As always, he stopped and took a breath before swinging it open. A man stood there, looking very tired and out of breath.
"Good morning, sir," he said. Gregory didn't know him, but immediately recognized his uniform.
"Ah...so it's coming, then," Gregory answered. He didn't need an introduction to know what the man's presence meant.
"Eh...yes, I'm afraid so." The man seemed unsurprised by Gregory's bluntness. "This area is in the primary danger zone." He was almost apologetic.
Gregory let out a heavy sigh. He expected this news every day of his life, but it never made it easier to hear. "I understand, I know what to do, been through it before. You'd best get to the others," he said. He suddenly felt exhausted.
"Of course, thank you, sir. And best of luck." The man gave a short nod, which Gregory returned. He then hurried off towards the home next door.
Gregory slowly closed the door and spent a moment just staring at the floor. Then he looked over at his two sons for a long moment, frozen, despite the vital task he had ahead of him. This was what all the preparation and fussing was for - Gregory had to pack up everything he could take with him and be ready to evacuate the camp at a moment's notice. He didn't know if it was coming through the encampment at all, but if it was, they had to move fast.
"What was that, Daddy?" one of the boys asked. He didn't seem worried at all - Gregory took a moment to decide how much to tell his sons.
"Well, boys," Gregory said, trying to suppress the stress he was feeling. "We might be having to move, so we have to pack up all our stuff and be ready to go, okay?" He didn't figure he'd be able to get away with just that, though. The boys were at that age where they were asking questions about everything.
"Oh...so does that mean the Juggernaut's coming?" There was actually a hint of excitement in the boy's voice. Gregory grumbled to himself, they must have heard rumours of the thing from their friends. He didn't see any point in lying now.
"Well, maybe. We never know exactly where it's going to go, but it's coming this way." Gregory told them. He was trying to still sound calm and confident, and somehow getting it out and telling the truth was helping. "Now go pack up your things, we have to be ready to go as soon as possible, just in case."
"Okay." The boys seemed a little worried, but followed his orders. Gregory figured they probably couldn't understand the full implications of the situation. "Have you ever seen it, Daddy?"
"Oh, sure, a few times," Gregory answered almost absent-mindedly as he worked on packing himself. "So have you guys, actually, you were just too young to remember." And that was true, only a few months after the boys were born, the Juggernaut went through their encampment and leveled it.
"Is that when Mommy..." The boy trailed off, and Gregory winced, immediately regretting having mentioned it.
Back then, the last time Gregory had seen the thing, the early warning system broke down - the team hadn't been able to visit all the encampments that were potentially in danger. Gregory and his wife hadn't had proper time to prepare for evacuation - in fact they didn't have any time at all. The monster's footsteps from afar shook the house so violently that its shoddy frame collapsed. Gregory's wife was trapped in the rubble, but Gregory knew he couldn't help her, he had to get the boys out to safety - she told him as much, too.
Gregory had gotten the boys away safely, but couldn't get back in time. The Juggernaut walked right through the encampment, and Gregory's wife couldn't do anything to get out of the way. She was lost that day, and though Gregory told the boys that she was gone, he had never told them exactly what happened. He wasn't sure if it was more out of wanting to spare the boys, or from not wanting to speak it because of the overwhelming guilt he felt from not being able to save her. Either way, at least right now, he knew he had to focus on the task at hand.
"Just get your things together, boys. Hurry up!" Gregory knew he was starting to sound frantic, so took a moment to try to calm himself down. Making things worse was the fact that they were starting to feel slight tremors from the thing's footsteps.
The boys seemed to have moved on in their though processes. "No one around here seems to know what the Juggernaut actually is. Why does it just walk around crushing stuff?" one of them asked.
"Well," Gregory actually stopped to give a thoughtful answer to that question. "It's true, no one really knows what it is, or what it wants. It's been around for as long as anyone ever recorded, and all we've ever seen it do is just keep walking forward."
Ever since humans had evolved to be intelligent enough to record history, they'd been researching the Juggernaut. What they found was that it never seemed to eat or sleep, but the main thing: it never stopped. It always just walked forward, crushing whatever was in its path without prejudice. Any attempts to attack or harm the Juggernaut were ineffectual, and seemed to go completely unnoticed. The only deviation they found was that it never went perfectly straight, meaning they could never accurately predict where it would go.
"Some people think that it was sent from God to judge those that have sinned," Gregory continued. "There are lots of different stories like that. But then some people think that it's just a beast that walks forward, without really knowing that it's doing any harm to anything else. The bottom line is, though, that we just don't know."
"What do you think, Daddy?" one of the boys asked.
"Well, I don't really know, son" Gregory answered earnestly. "I just hope that someday we'll be able to give someone who's smart enough the tools to find out. Now finish packing, we have to go."
Gregory and his boys finished packing, and brought their things outside. They could see other families gathering outside their homes too, bringing along everything they could carry. The tremors got stronger as time went on, and feeling them brought Gregory back to the worst day of his life. He told himself that things would be different today, though. They were ready.
Eventually, the beast came into view, and it was indeed heading straight for their encampment. The boys were completely awed by the sight of the thing, but Gregory felt only contempt and regret. It had no identifying features that would suggest that it was a living thing, besides its legs. It appeared to be just a walking mountain. Gregory quickly shook the boys out of their stupor, though - they had to run.
The leaders of the encampment picked a direction, and the families just ran, hoping that the Juggernaut would not veer in their direction. Time seemed to be going almost in slow motion as they ran, and by now the creatures footsteps were deafening. The strongest men in the encampment and those without families to take care of stayed at the back, helping stragglers along if they slowed down or fell. Eventually, after what seemed like miles, the leaders called for the group to stop.
They had succeeded in getting clear of the Juggernaut's path, but unfortunately, it went straight through their encampment. Several structures were crushed with one titanic step, vanishing - having been stomped flat into the ground. Some people groaned as they watched their homes being crushed, but Gregory felt something that he could barely remember even existed - relief. Everyone had gotten out; they were all safe.
"Wow..." said one of the boys, seemingly overwhelmed by the whole situation.
"What are we going to do now, Daddy?" the other one asked.
Gregory was a bit overwhelmed himself, finally letting all the feelings rush over him now that the danger had passed. "We go back and rebuild, boys," he replied.
Then, he whispered to himself, "And wait for next time."
END
So this story was actually inspired by a song, this one!
Should be pretty easy to tell why if you listen to the lyrics. The line 'crushing all in its path' just made me think of this mountainous creature, that all it ever did was walk forward and, well, crush everything in its path. Then I started thinking about how humans would live in that world, and the story came from that. I figured that there probably wouldn't be much technology, because any sort of research facility might just get crushed before it had time to discover anything. Kind of an interesting thing to think about.
And the name, Juggernauts, I pluralized it, even though in the story there seems to be only one Juggernaut. It's kind of a play on the idea that, today in the real world, humans kind of think of ourselves as the juggernauts. We think we're all high and mighty, but we're really kind of fragile, aren't we? Natural disasters like that terrible tragedy of the tornado down in the states last week (I think?) show us that. And I don't think I really have a point to make with this, but it's just something I think about sometimes.
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