90_Minutes_to_Live

by JournalStone

  “Because there is no way in hell that I will ever wear a ring again.”

  THE END

  City of Fire

  (Science Fiction)

  By

  Timothy Miller

  The sky above the city was burning.

  Colton peered out from under the broken ferrocrete of the half-collapsed bomb shelter, his gaze locked on the storm raging beside the World Wall.

  A flash of lighting ignited another of the rolling black clouds gathered near the Wall, transforming the volatile gas into a billowy mass of flame that poured down the side like a blazing waterfall. Across the street from Colton’s shelter thinner tendrils of flame lashed at the Maze, scorching the piles of rock and metal to black.

  These storms were getting worse.

  Colton cursed softly. The pyrotechnics reminded him of erupting lava fields and the waves of molten rock swallowing the hunting grounds of his clan.

  “Hell above, Hell below,” he muttered. “The whole world is on fire.”

  Thunder rumbled and another burning cloud burst to life.

  Rags tensed, whining softly.

  “It’s just a storm,” Colton said. Laying a hand on the worlhound’s bullet-shaped head, he stroked the scaly black hide. “Show some courage.”

  Rags voiced an offended growl and gazed up at him with narrowed, golden eyes.

  Colton chuckled. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  The worlhound was three-hundred pounds of muscle and razor teeth, a born killer. Colton had raised him from a pup after discovering him in a nest of filthy garments almost six years before.

  Another cloud exploded and Rags backed further into the shelter.

  Colton rolled his eyes. “Let’s have lunch. We’re not going anywhere until the storm breaks anyway.”

  Rags’s tongue lolled out in agreement.

  Giving a final scratch behind the worlhound’s ears, Colton took out his skinning knife and moved to the far back of the shelter where he’d stashed the goat. It was a scrawny specimen, with whitish-pink skin sprouting infrequent tufts of hair, but it was food.

  Colton made his first cut just below the ribcage.

  Rags had flushed the goat from the Maze and Colton took it as a good omen. He’d not seen so much as a lizard-rat in two weeks and little else since the lava fields erupted two weeks before. Nothing but reavers and those he’d seen in plenty, brought out in their hundreds by the chaos. Those mutants would eat everything and everyone, if they could.

  He took heart at finding the goat. If goats still thrived in the shadow of the Wall, perhaps Odin wouldn’t object to adding another able scavenger to his den.

  Colton frowned, not pleased at the thought of living so near the Maze again. Collapsed spires of glass, crushed machines resembling hollowed eggs, burnt skeletons of metal and men, all jammed together at the foot of the World Wall in a mishmash of twisting corridors and crumbling tunnels. Why Odin would choose to live in such a place was beyond him.

  He tossed the goat’s innards behind him and Rags tore into the offering with a contented growl.

  Colton swiftly butchered the goat. Taking a strip of meat for himself and wrapping the remainder in the hide, patting the bundle down with handfuls of soot to mask the scent. Odin had taught him the trick, one of many, which kept Colton and his den alive the last ten years.

  But his den wasn’t alive anymore.

  “Just me and you now, Rags.”

  Rags, a half-eaten goat liver in his mouth, didn’t reply.

  Fixing his meat to one of the blades protruding from either end of his spear, Colton placed the weapon across his knees. Removing a circular tin from his pocket, he peeled off the rumpled foil covering it. The chemical stink of raingrease filled the shelter. He ignited the tin with his flicker and red flames rose from the raingrease inside.

  As Colton roasted his dinner over the small fire, the storm’s fury began to wane. After eating, he scrubbed his hands with soot. Taking out his canteen, he unscrewed the cap and sniffed the water inside. It smelled rancid.

  Removing a silver capsule from a pouch inside his coat, he dropped it into the canteen and swirled the container. Sniffing the water again, he swallowed a mouthful and put the canteen away.

  “Three weeks without new water Rags, and all the cisterns are gone,” he said. “If Odin doesn’t take us in, I’ll be drinking raingrease instead of cooking with it.”

  Rags licked his chops indifferently.

  “I’m touched by your concern.”

  Rags yawned.

  Colton leaned against the wall and sank into his thoughts. The lack of water worried him. His den’s purifying unit was destroyed in the eruptions and he had no clue how to procure another. He needed water, even more than he needed food.

  He glanced at Rags. Like all the city’s animals the worlhound took moisture from hardy lichen growing in the ruins. But even the lichen were drying up under the increasingly frequent firestorms. Only the reavers, who drank raingrease, were immune to the drought.

  Colton inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

  A small boy stared at him over the shoulder of a grinning reaver.

  Colton’s eyes snapped open but the haunting image remained in his mind, as real and painful as a fresh burn.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said, telling himself it was the truth.

  But the words were like ash on his tongue. He didn’t close his eyes again until the firestorm ceased to thunder. In the stillness, he again began to edge toward sleep.

  Rags’s head suddenly came up.

  Colton snatched up his spear and moved quickly to the shelter’s entrance. “Steady boy,” he whispered. “I’ll check.”

  In the aftermath of the storm, the sky was an ashy grey and dim sunlight bathed the city in white sickly haze. Colton scanned the broken structures along the Maze. A hint of movement made him hunker down as a group of hideously deformed men dragged a struggling figure from a building to his left.

  “Reavers,” Colton hissed, anger and fear tightening his hold on his spear.

  There were twenty of the mutants, their skin knotted with scar tissue and weeping blisters. Dressed in soiled rags, they carried crude axes and spears. Their prisoner was a young girl of about sixteen. Her pants and overly thick coat were of a strange greenish hide, a color not often seen in a landscape of blacks and grays. Her dark curls were long, reaching to the center of her back.

  Colton touched his scalp, brushing over the quarter-inch bristles. Only an idiot grew long hair in a city that rained fire.

  The majority of the reavers fanned out in the street, moving past Colton’s hiding place at a loping jog while two spear-wielding guards prodded the girl along from the rear.

  Rags crept up beside Colton, his golden eyes shining and alert.

  “They’re bringing her to their den,” Colton whispered. “They’ll butcher her, cutting her up a piece at a time. Unlucky.”

  The memory of the boy rose again in his mind, mocking him for his cowardice, convicting him of his guilt. He banished the image with a growl, concentrating instead on the reavers as those in the front of the group turned a corner up the street, opposite the Maze.

  Colton nodded to himself. Once the reavers moved on, he would head into the Maze; no sense giving the pack another chance to pick up his scent. More of the reavers passed his shelter and turned the corner, until only the girl and her guards remained.

  Suddenly she tripped and fell, banging her elbows and knees on the soot-covered ferrocrete. Her guards laughed, a sound as harsh as their ravaged skin, and poked her with the tips of their weapons. The girl grimaced but didn’t cry out. She started to rise, pushing a stray lock of her absurdly long hair from her face.

  And she froze.

  With sinking dread Colton realized she was looking right at him.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, his insides curling into a knot. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Help me,” the girl said. Then more loudly, “Help me!”

/>   Colton ducked down, but it was too late.

  Alerted by the girl’s call, one of the guards spotted the furtive movement and voiced a hunting shriek. A spear sliced into his throat, cutting off the shriek as he stumbled back.

  Following his attack, Colton charged from the shelter toward the second guard. The reaver met him with a quick stab of sharpened metal but Colton rolled under the assault. Coming up inside the mutant’s guard, he hamstrung the reaver with a violent slash of his knife.

  The reaver went down, mewling and clutching his leg.

  Spinning past it, Colton grabbed the shaft of his spear and jerked it clear of the first guard’s throat.

  The mutant made a wet gurgling sound and tried to grab him.

  Colton cut its legs out from under it and sprinted toward the Maze. An axe-wielding reaver blocked his way but three-hundred pounds of angry worlhound buried it. Silencing the axman with a snap of his jaws, Rags hurried after Colton. Furious shrieking followed them as they ducked between two house-thick durosteel girders and disappeared into the Maze.

  Sprinting down a curving passage of blackened metal, Colton reached an oval room linked by a dozen corridors. Choosing at random, he kept running, veering to the left as the corridor split again. At the third such intersection, he abruptly swung around and brought up his spear.

  Stiffening his forelegs and dropping to his rear, Rags came to a skidding halt behind him.

  “Glad you could keep up,” Colton said. “You should work on the stop.”

  Rags grunted sourly.

  A green figure shambled into view, rebounding from the wall in front of Colton.

  He nearly skewered the girl before recognizing her as the reavers’ prisoner. Lowering the spear, he cursed. Not that he was unhappy the girl escaped…but if she had followed him this far, the reavers wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Why did you run so far ahead?” the girl asked; her face was dripping with sweat and she was breathing heavily. “I almost lost you.”

  Colton cocked an eyebrow. Why should he wait for her? He almost asked. She wasn’t even from his den. Instead he said, “You’d run faster if you took off that ridiculous coat.”

  “Kinda hard to do when you’re tied up,” she retorted. She held out her hands, exposing the strips of cloth still binding her wrists. “Can you get these off?”

  He hesitated—out of pure irritation mostly. Then his spear lashed out and the restraints fell away in fluttering pieces.

  The girl yelped, pulling back her fingers as if she expected them to fall off with the bindings.

  “You’re free,” he said flatly. “Now, what are you doing here?”

  Rubbing her chaffed wrists, she sagged against the wall. “I got separated from the others, tried to hide in a stairwell.” Swallowing thickly, she pulled a water flask from her pocket and took a long drink before adding, “I’m Lina.”

  “I didn’t ask your name,” Colton said. “I asked—arghh.”

  A metal pipe collided with his temple. He staggered, trying to right himself and the reaver who’d dropped from the ceiling to strike him, raised the pipe again.

  Lina screamed.

  Rags slammed into the reaver like a locomotive, driving it back into a pack of them emerging from around the corner. Rags tore into the group and a mutant screamed as blood spattered the walls.

  “Rags!” cried Colton, starting after his friend.

  Lina snagged his sleeve. “No,” she said. “We have to run!”

  He stared at her dumbly and suddenly realized what he’d been about to do; the pipe had scrambled his brains. Rags was giving them a chance. They had to take it.

  “This way,” he said.

  She followed him as they ran to the next intersection and veered left. They’d run only a few hundred meters when a worlhound’s howl drew a grimace from Colton.

  The howl was a signal. Rags had broken off from the fight.

  Minutes later, Rags caught up to them and Colton noted the shallow wounds marking the scaly black hide as his friend came to heel beside him. Fortunately the cuts were minor and Rags seemed unaffected by the injuries.

  “You couldn’t...have…held...them longer?” he managed between breaths.

  Massive chest heaving with his recent exertions, Rags didn’t even bother to grunt in reply.

  A shriek sounded behind them and Colton willed his legs to move faster. Lina and Rags sped up with him and they kept up the grueling pace until they came to a square chamber, dissected by a deep crevice.

  He went to the lip of the chasm and looked down. Far below, glowing lava spit fire into the air. It was too far to jump but a rusted beam, barely a handbreadth across, bridged the divide.

  Rags went first, running nimbly over the tiny bridge to the opposite side. Colton followed more cautiously, offering Lina a brief warning as he went. “Don’t look down.”

  But Lina seemed unimpressed by the drop and followed him onto the beam without the slightest hint of hesitation.

  “Do you think we lost them?” she asked.

  “I don’t-”

  His foot slipped out from under him. He teetered, his heart in his throat, unable to regain balance. Below, the lava rose up as if in greeting.

  Lina grabbed his shoulder, steadying him. “Careful,” she said but she was smiling. “It looks hot down there.”

  Not trusting his voice Colton nodded his thanks and then baby-stepped the rest of the way across.

  “So,” she said, jumping lightly to the other side, “did we lose them?”

  Colton shoved the beam over the edge and it tumbled down into fire and darkness.

  “The gap will slow them,” he said as he stood, “but they’ll find a way around. I have a feeling they’ll keep chasing us until the next rain or firestorm washes away our scent.”

  She stared up at the ceiling and the ashy clouds visible through the wide cracks. “When will that be?”

  A reaver’s shriek echoed again through the Maze.

  Colton’s jaw tightened. “Not soon enough.”

  Several passages branched out from the room and Colton suddenly realized he recognized this place. As Odin’s pupil, he used to trap goats in this same room. He glanced back at the chasm, understanding the lava-filled gap had not been present five years ago.

  “Come on,” he said, moving to the passage furthest to the right. “I have an idea.”

  They ran down a trash-cluttered corridor for several minutes before Colton stopped next to a thin metal plating resting against the wall. Moving the plate aside, he exposed an opening in the ferrocrete wall, a hole barely wide enough for a man to squeeze inside. He whistled to Rags, and the worlhound obediently ran into the hole.

  “Inside,” Colton said to her. “Hurry.”

  She gazed at the dark opening uncertainly. “Where does it lead?”

  A distant shriek answered her.

  He cursed. “Do you want to die? Get moving or I’ll leave you to the reavers!”

  Pursing her lips, she dropped to her knees and scrambled into the hole. Grasping the metal plate, Colton backed in after her, covering the opening before moving further into the narrow tunnel. After a dozen meters, the tunnel opened and he was able to stand.

  “I can’t see,” Lina said, sounding very young in the darkness.

  “Give me a minute.”

  Removing his raingrease tin, he ignited it with his flicker. The flame was small but bright enough to illuminate the maintenance shaft. Unlike most of the Maze the ceiling was intact here, which explained the darkness. Rubble blocked the shaft in one direction but the other continued into the black beyond the tin’s light.

  “What now?” Lina asked.

  He crouched down beside the hole in the wall. “The reavers know they’re closing in. I’m hoping that means they’re overeager and they’ll run past us before they realize they’ve lost our scent.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll head back the way we came. Even if the reavers come back, our new tr
ail will overlap the old. It will be like we disappeared into thin air.”

  “That makes sense, I guess,” she said shortly. “But what if they don’t pass us? What if they find the tunnel?”

  He nodded down the shaft. “That has to go somewhere. If they come we’ll just have to find out where.”

  She chewed her lip thoughtfully and then shrugged. “Guess so.”

  Colton smiled. “Take off that coat Lina. It’s too heavy and will only slow you down.”

  “And too hot,” she added, shrugging it off, then dropping it to the floor.

  Underneath she wore a sleeveless vest of the same green hide. There was a small tattoo on her upper arm of a winged creature with a hooked nose.

  His eyes widened. He’d heard of such markings but never seen one himself. “Is that an eagle?”

  Lina glanced at the tattoo. “It’s our clan mark. Everyone in the scraper has one.”

  “So you’re a skyper,” he said. Unlike the street-dwelling scavengers skypers lived in scrapers, the frozen towers of the old world. Reclusive and aloof, they were rarely seen outside their fortified buildings. He rolled his eyes. “The giant coat, the hair, I should have known the minute I saw you that you were a scraper hugger.”

  “Well, I knew you were a scavenger right away,” she said, pinching her nose and looking at him over her fingers, “from the smell.”

  Colton laughed. “So what are you doing so close to the Maze? I thought your kind never strayed far from your scrapers.”

  “We don’t, usually,” she admitted. “We don’t need anything down here.”

  He patted his canteen. “What about water and food?”

  “Our scraper is high,” she said, “higher even than the fire clouds. It is cold above but there’s rain, clean rain that freezes to ice at the highest levels. We boil it for drinking and use it for our gardens.”

  His brow furrowed. “Gardens?”

  “We grow many things in the inner chambers, vegetables mostly, some fruits.” Lina patted her vest. “We even make our clothing from plant fibers.”

  He could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Food, water, no firestorms or reavers….” he shook his head. “No wonder you stay in your scrapers.”