by Orion, W. J.
She ducked into the corner of a destroyed, old business half-buried in sand and consulted the conversation she and Trey had on her mom’s phone.
My group searched high and low all over the city and the surrounding towns looking for supplies.
We left a good amount in place when we knew survivors were nearby and likely to find it.
Critical items we would move pretty much directly in the path of survivors so they’d find it quicker.
You guys sound like angels.
Ha, straight from Heaven above? Not quite. But thanks.
So some stuff stayed, some stuff was moved for easy finding, and some stuff was placed into caches.
Caches?
Locations were we hid supplies so we could reveal them at the best time.
Oh. I call those hidey holes.
Ha, that’s cute.
Thanks.
Anyway, we found a delivery truck on an elevated freeway/bridge that wasn’t easy to get to. Bombed out on both sides. Head south from where you are until you find the east-west highway with three lanes. Only one in the area. Two hills and a dry riverbed in the center. Elevated highway connected the two hills.
How’d you get to the top?
Long story. It involved climbing. Inside the truck we found a shipment heading to a pharmacy.
Jackpot. Serious jackpot. Lifetime supply of water for that.
Yeah. So getting up there was a real chore, and it wasn’t near anyone, so we moved it.
To where?
In the ravine directly below the truck head northwest for… about a thousand of your steps. The hills flatten out, and you’ll be nearing an industrial complex. There’s a drainage culvert there with a large sewer access. You can’t miss it because we bent back the metal grating to get inside.
You guys are serious about this, huh?
Were serious. Everyone’s dead but me.
I feel like the people who benefitted from your group are going to miss you.
I hope that’s the legacy we leave behind. All we ever wanted to do was help them. Do right by them.
Are you sure you’re not angels? Y’all sound too good to be true.
Not angels.
I’ll accept miracle workers.
Miracle workers it is, then. Givers of hope. Word of the week, apparently.
Of the week? Is there a joke I’m missing?
Inside joke. I’ll tell you all about it if I rescue you.
And, if you tell me how you got to the top of the bombed out freeway.
Deal. Okay, so into the sewer grate, maybe… a hundred steps in. There’s a left hand turn too. Blue synthetic cases that are airtight. It’s more than you can carry.
As my mom would say, challenge accepted.
What do you mean by synthetic?
Um… plastic. No survivors in the area when we scouted it, but that was months ago.
Wait. So if you scouted that area to the south of Shant, and you were captured in the city by the Monoliths, did you come through Shant on your way?
We skirted it. We didn’t have any need for trade, and when we can, we avoid human contact.
I’m surprised I didn’t see you pass through. I must’ve been sleeping.
We tend to move during the day.
Why? It’s so hot.
Less people move during the day. They’re afraid of crabs.
I guess. I sleep during the day if I’m picking. Easier to move at night.
Makes sense. Good luck with this. Be careful.
Remember what I said. No fighting. No one dies.
Roger dodger, Trey.
Night, Yaz.
Yaz got a little rush out of the whole conversation, then felt hollow when they weren’t talking. It was the weirdest experience. After music, and pictures of her mom and dad, she fell asleep.
Now, about a thousand paces down the ravine, past the towering skeleton of the overpass, towards the industrial park she was crouched in the ruins of, she saw the edge of the road where the culvert was. The hole cut under the road beneath a guardrail that had a crashed pickup atop it. Rather than just head straight in, she’d circled the area, waited and watched, and listened.
No one was in the vicinity, she was sure of it. No fires lit the dark, no smoke filtered into the air, no wild animals roamed, and no crabs lumbered through the destroyed factories and warehouses.
She thought of skinny little Owen, and the sudden coughing fit that might take him from his family.
“Not on my watch, kid. Let’s see if these plastic bins are still there.”
She stood, stepped over some shattered concrete blocks, and jogged across the parking lot and road to the guardrail and the drainage culvert at its base.
She stopped before heading down and got her empty pistol into her pants pocket. She hefted the comforting weight of the halligan tool and felt ready.
Yaz wouldn’t look for a fight, but she’d be ready for one if she found it.
Chapter Fourteen
So this One Time, I Found a Hole in the Ground
She found the opening to her final destination in the culvert beside the road, perpendicular to the street, running under it like a tunnel through the bottom of a mountain.
The vertical circle of metal grating covering the five foot tube of sewer was the heaviest steel she’d seen made into a lattice barrier. Each of the strands of worn metal criss-crossing the sewer hole were as thick as the pens she hoarded, and ran the width of the pipe’s mouth when they were installed. The thick wires were spaced wide enough for her to squeeze her closed hand through, but nothing beyond that.
She didn’t have to squeeze though. Trey’s group had ripped a hole in the lower center of the grate big enough for two adults to walk through side by side, assuming they bent over to avoid tearing the coverings on their heads off.
Looks like a mouth with a hundred needled teeth, she imagined. The thought struck her with fear and she hesitated at the maw of the tunnel. Yaz closed her eyes and took a deep breath in of the cold night air.
“When others turn around, I move forward,” she said to herself, and took a step forward. She halted, the stubborn fear inside her cementing her foot down. Her grip tightened on the cold metal of the halligan tool and the emotion that tried to control her faded like she had choked it into submission. She would not be dominated by silly feelings she didn’t choose to have. She would be strong.
With a smile, the young lady ducked and moved into the pitch-black tunnel that disappeared under the street above.
Meeks.
Rats. Mice. Lizards. Spiders. Insects.
Yaz’s mom used to say, “The meek shall inherit the Earth.” For years Yaz called the rats, mice, and lizards that were everywhere, “meeks.” There were so many of them now. The tiny creatures could hide anywhere, and they found food easy enough, and water better than any other creature that survived the theft of the oceans and lakes and rivers. Cows were extinct for the most part but mice….
Were frigging everywhere. Yaz’s mother was right. The meek had inherited the Earth for sure.
In the tunnel she had to be cautious where she placed her feet. Five of her first steps into the low tunnel ended with a crunch and a pop as her booted foot squished one of the frantic rodents or lizards. She didn’t flinch in the least; picking led her down more infested paths than she had any right to explore in ten lifetimes. Maybe on her way out she’d scoop up a handful of the tasty lizards and bring them to the lizard cart in the Shant market. Two for one picking special on the trip out here. No reason why she couldn’t turn a little profit.
She thought of the Murdoughs, and decided the lizards would go to them. The kid’s smiles would be her profit.
“I can’t see,” she muttered under her breath, and dug out her mom’s phone. She’d left the lantern behind in her escape from the school. With a few taps of her practiced thumb she had the flashlight on, and its harsh white beam lit the next few feet into the bowels of the bone-dry sewers.
She
stepped on fewer and fewer meeks as she pressed forward. The light scared them, or maybe it was the sound of their friends and family being trampled by a giant. Didn’t matter to Yaz, so long as the furry or scaled, disease ridden monsters turned tail and kept away. With her halligan hand she pulled up the thin cotton scarf around her neck and covered her mouth and nose.
Her big feet stirred up the ground, and the air was thick with dust, and aerated feces. If she didn’t protect her lungs she’d be using all of Trey’s med stash on herself.
If they were still there.
She ducked under massive spider webs and equally substantial spiders and paid them no heed. Her mother had taught her which species were dangerous, and she paid their fat, round bodies no mind. Unlike their fleeing meek cousins on the ground they sat still, all eight eyes watching her as she passed under.
She stepped around broken concrete blocks that had been tossed or discarded in the tunnel like busted teeth. She made double careful not to cut her feet on jagged pieces of the concrete or twist and roll an ankle. She paused when her foot found a peculiar opening in the debris.
“What the…?” Yasmine pointed her mom’s phone at her foot and steadied herself using the halligan. Her boot on the bottom of the curved sewer tunnel sat in an almost perfectly round crater with a shattered block around it.
“Something real strong smashed this block apart, right here.”
Another step forward and she found another block smashed apart in the same manner. It was as if a very strong picker struck the two blocks with a very large sledgehammer, smashing them asunder and leaving a void where the hammer struck.
“Okay, weird. Who is breaking blocks down here?” Someone from Trey’s group?
The answer her imagination gave her made her bring the halligan back up to the ready. If a certain someone was strong enough to break these blocks, and that someone had broken the blocks down here… they might still be down here, and might still be strong.
Strong with a sledgehammer.
Yaz scanned left and right, and saw a dozen or more of the busted blocks, each with the same central hammer-strike. The empty pistol in her pants pocket suddenly felt like a useless burden.
Ahead a few yards she saw a T intersection.
“There’s a left turn,” she said, remembering Trey’s directions. She took a deep breath, sighed, and once her legs stopped wobbling from fear, she moved forward to the corner, and turned off her mom’s flashlight.
Yaz leaned around the edge of the round tunnel and looked to the left towards where the plastic bins should be. Her mouth was still dry enough to light a match in, and she felt a terrible pressure growing in her chest as her heart tried to hit the eject button to get away from the lunacy in the tunnel.
She saw nothing. The darkness formed an impenetrable wall. If anyone lurked near the treasures she sought, they did so in the dark. Smart.
She stood back up to the maximum of her hunched height, and reached into a small side pocket in her backpack. A tubular, battered plastic flashlight no longer than the width of her palm came out of the bag and she flicked the switch on its metal side. A weak yellow stream spilled out of one end, and she underhanded the rechargeable tool around the corner so it would land facing away from her, maybe ten yards distant.
She ducked back around the corner, and listened to the flashlight click and clack as its light danced and flashed. It stopped moving, and she could tell the light had faced at least to the side, if not fully away as she intended.
Yaz dropped to her belly and crawled up to the corner. She squeezed the last inch forward just enough to see down the way to her light grenade.
Blue blocks filled the entire space. Cases, bins, totes, stacked on top of each other went from floor to ceiling, completely blocking off the tunnel. She didn’t count, but there had to be 25 of the containers.
Notably, there was no giant with a sledgehammer. At least not to the left.
“Dammit, Yaz. Idiot,” she muttered to herself and rolled to look down the neglected passage to her right.
What she saw there—not five feet away—made her drop the halligan tool, and crawl—run—away, over the meeks and the spiders and sharp pieces of shattered stone as fast as she could.
She could only think to hit her own eject button.
Chapter Fifteen
That’s Not Armor. That’s a Vehicle.
A crab. Standing not ten feet away from the intersection. Not five feet.
She had just seen a crab.
A big, bulky, three foot wide, six foot long, six legged, tentacle faced, two armed, biomechanical, armored alien. Sitting right there, not ten feet away in the direction she didn’t look.
As she scrambled away from the claustrophobic tunnel and the monster within she caught a piece of her pants on the sharp tips of the wrecked metal grate, tearing a hole in the fabric. The snag tossed her off balance and she tumbled to the bed of rounded stones that made up the drainage ditch. She rolled to her back and held up the halligan towards the tunnel exit. Her wound cried out, triggering waves of pain that spread out from her kidneys and hips and crashed over her.
Her heart pounded. Her mouth had gotten drier. So dry her tongue burned. Her eyes were forced shut from the bright light of the moon and the carpet of stars it lay against above. Compared to the cave she’d just left the visibility was perfect. Her forearms, knees and shins stung from the scratches the shards of concrete gave her, but she ignored the pointless pain. If the crab appeared, following her—when the crab appeared—she had to….
“I’m dead,” she said to no one.
No one in or out of the tunnel agreed or disagreed. If the crab came out of that tunnel wanting to burn her to a crisp, there was nothing she could do about it. There would be a bright blue crackle of energy, and then there would be a burning pile of Yasmine where she was. The hurt young woman focused like a laser, and stilled her breathing. In between the pounding of the heart trying to flee from her chest she listened.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
No birds chirping, no bugs rubbing their wings, no lizards hissing, nothing. Of particular comfort to Yaz was that she didn’t hear the stomping of the crab’s armored legs coming down the tunnel. She didn’t hear the same chest-rattling hum she heard in the school. She didn’t feel her hairs stand on end, and she didn’t feel the blue alien energy building in the air, on her skin.
If the crab in the tunnel wanted to kill her…
“Maybe it’s asleep?” she whispered. “Or maybe I scared it down the tunnel? Away?” She laughed a nervous titter. “I scared a crab away? Fat chance, Yaz.”
Somehow, the moment’s intensity faded. Maybe it was the laughter, maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t been blasted apart by electrified plasma technology. Maybe she’d found more bravery.
The pain showed up.
An army of lacerations and bruises assaulted her senses as she got to her feet in the culvert. She checked on all sides that no one approached and she addressed her wounds. Nothing deep, all superficial. Well, the wound in her back from the first encounter with a crab ached and burned worse than anything she’d ever experienced. It hurt to breathe.
She shrugged her backpack off and found the small bottle of medicine Dr. Sonneborn gave her. She fished two of the white pills out and took them with a swig of cool water from her hip canteen. The pills would take time to work, but the water felt good immediately. That lasted until another sharp stab of pain emanated from the big wound.
Yaz reached around to her back and searched the area of the bandage. Her fingers came back covered with a thin layer of blood. The bandage and her shirt had soaked through. In a fun twist, the wound started to hurt even more. Like, black-out bad.
“Oh this was a mistake. Terrible mistake.”
She looked up from her bloody fingers and into the recesses of the drainage tunnel. Crab or not, pain or not, she had to get proof of the containers back to Shant. A picture on her mom’s phone at a minimu
m. If she could open the bins and take a few samples.…
She pushed forward. Fear abandoned in favor of finding validation, she ducked under the shredded metal grating and went straight in until she was ten feet from the T intersection. She rested the halligan against the circular wall and her mom’s phone came out.
She shined the flashlight on the phone to the right and picked the halligan back up.
“Let’s do this, crab. Amicably, if we can,” she said, and walked to the intersection and faced right.
The white hulking armor of the alien stood silent just feet away. As tall as she was and almost as wide as the span of her arms, the crab remained motionless as she approached it. None of the clustered eyes above the mass of facial tentacles were lit, or moved to track her motion. The legs didn’t flex or adjust to a combat stance and the beast paid her no mind. It might as well have been…
“Dead? Are you dead?” she whispered to it.
It didn’t agree, or disagree. No limbs moved, and no suspended tentacles twitched. None of the lenses of its open eyes showed the glimmer of life.
“Like you could understand me. You’re dead aren’t you? That armored door isn’t covering all your precious eyes and sensors. Did Trey’s group take you out?”
Without thinking, she tapped the face of the alien with the end of her fireman’s tool. The titanium crowbar tip clanked on the hard surface of the crab’s armor and made a weird noise. Not a metallic sound, not a wooden sound, but something more like hitting hard plastic. Maybe ceramic?
Or shell?
She recoiled in horror at her own idiocy.
“Stupid! Why!?” she said to herself. “Who taps a crab that might be sleeping ON THE FACE!?” she whispered to herself, harsher than she’d ever been.
