As they moved further into the graveyard, the cracked and decayed headstones and monuments rose up. But there was no sense of peace about them. They seemed to be damaged in just the right way to remind June of lost chances, the moss that covered them giving the eroded stone a leprous appearance.

Some of the headstones had pits in front of them, shattered coffins and their occupants exposed to the air. A few of the coffins were intact, but that was worse…

June swallowed. She could hear the scratching.

Just memories, or someone in there, trapped in the nightmare of being buried alive?

As they kept walking, the gravestones and crypts rose around them, trees now pushing out from the sides of the ravine, their roots clawing at cracked marble busts and headstones. June looked up, and she could barely see the sky. She could—something swept over them, great wings blotting out the few stars.

June held her breath, but it kept going. In front of her, Hank had also paused.

“We’re sort of lucky,” he murmured.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Darktown is… not helping us, but remember, nothing works here. Not if you want it to. It’ll fight people trying to catch us as hard as it’ll keep us from going out into the City.” He shook his head and chuckled, the sound alien in the graveyard. “As far as Darktown is concerned, the best outcome is us spending the rest of eternity here, running, and the other guys spending the rest of eternity chasing us.”

“Oh. But…” June looked around. “How do we get out? I have some ideas, but they might take some time and, you know, monsters in the sky…”

“That’s gonna be hard, but let’s go. We need to get under cover, and I know a place.” Hank looked at her. “I ran into it… a long time ago, when I was with someone else.”

“Who?” June asked.

Hank took a deep breath. “Can’t tell you, June. People from Darktown, the people who get out, are the only ones who can tell someone their story.”

“Right.” June pressed by a coffin that was sticking out into the ravine. “Are we going to get out of this?”

“Yeah.” Hank gestured. “It’ll get tighter, then open up.”

And he was right. Thorns tore at June, roots tried to trip her and she didn’t look down to see what she was walking on after the first time she noticed all the skulls, some of them with hair and skin still clinging to them. The smell of rot grew more intense until June was holding her nose.

“We’re almost here,” Hank told her. “Breathe out, this part is super narrow.”

“Right,” June said. She exhaled and tried to shove through the ravine, almost getting wedged in, and then she was out. Behind them, the cliff face rose to the dark sky, memorials and tombs sticking out of it, all broken, all defaced. Before them…

What is this place? June stared at it. It was… a jungle, only a jungle that was seared, skeletons of great dinosaurs lying here and there, while frost dangled off of the charred trees. Behind them, June saw something rising in the distance. It’s like… “This is like Teacher’s ziggurat!”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “That’s why I never told you about it. You might have wanted to come, and nobody in their right mind comes to Darktown.”

This was the first place. The first time everyone died. Just like my home. June looked back the way they’d came. Mom and the others, are they going to form a place like this? A place where memory created an enduring monument to the end of the world? June shook her head, then glanced up.

“They’re still tracking us,” Hank said. “I don’t think they’ll stop, so once we get under cover, you need to figure out a way to get out as fast as possible.”

“Right.” June paused. “How’d you get out?”

“I almost didn’t.” Hank didn’t say anything else.

Right. No pressure.

As they kept walking, June saw more dead animals. Some of them burned, some of them torn to shreds by others, some of them gnawed. In fact…

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Not everything here is dead—I mean, it is, but it’s not all quiet,” June said.

“I know.”

Little furred creatures were nibbling and tearing at the corpses, and as they passed, some of them rose up and hissed at June. Then they passed more dinosaurs, these ones alive but helpless from starvation and illness, twitching and hooting in distress as the tiny teeth and claws tore the flesh from them.

The scent of sulphur-tinged smoke grew, until June was coughing, and now the sky was nothing but thick clouds lit by the glow of burning trees. It started to grow hot, but then there were chilly breezes that came and went.

“The rest of the graveyard is just for people who lost hope, in their lives or nations,” Hank said. “This is where a world died.”

“Yeah.” June sneezed from the ash in the air. Ash, mixed with snow, just like the burning trees had frost on their lower trunks. Beyond, somewhere in the distance, an animal hooted in pain and hunger. Too hot, and too cold… She remembered a movie talking about the earth after the asteroid. How in one second, the land would be burning, and then soon after, the snow would fall from the cloud-covered sky…

For months.

They kept walking, and more signs of life—dying life—appeared around them. A cluster of small dinosaurs, their feathers tattered and burned, hissed and snapped at another group, trying to defend a nest full of shattered eggs, a few infant dinosaurs lying dead among them. A bigger dinosaur, some four-legged behemoth, gave a last cry and fell over on its side.

Do these memories only play if we’re here, or do they play all the time? And is there anything but memories here?

“Right, here we are,” Hank gestured and in front of them was a broad path—no, a road, June realized. “We have to take the road. No other path gets us there.”

June glanced back at the great cliffs around them. “Hank, why not find some place to hide that’s… not here?”

“Too many people there. Nobody in Darktown is really happy about people getting out. But this place? They don’t come here.”

“I wonder why not?” June murmured.

Hank’s laugh was humorless. “If you were trapped in your own tragedy, would you want to come somewhere that would help put it into perspective?”

“And Darktown itself?”

“This is about as close to the center as you can get.”

So great, it’s not going to try to keep us in, because we’re helping it. Wonderful.

“So let’s move.” June looked up at the sky. “At least those damned flying things will have to get low to see us.”

“Yeah. Let’s go!”

June jumped onto the path with Hank, following his lead as they ran down it. The road wasn’t like any roads back home. It was dirt, with smooth rocks packed into it.

On each side there were pedestals, like the ones from Teacher’s ziggurat, but they had all been tumbled and shattered. And along with them, there were skeletons—big-brained, slim dinosaurs, like the ones that stood for all eternity at Teacher’s doors.

Here they lay in jumbled masses, where hunger, cold, or simple despair had brought them to their end. There were more, and June had to jump over some of the bodies, now with bits of flesh adhering to their bones.

Above them, there was a shriek in the air, joined by another one. June risked a look over her shoulder and saw the demonic forms circling over them.

“We need to hurry!” June shouted.

“No shit!” Hank said, grabbing her by one arm. Ahead of them was a ziggurat, bigger than Teacher’s, with more statues—all tumbled, all shattered. And around it were piles of skeletons and decaying forms.

They came here. I guess this was their great church or maybe something else, and they came here after the impact, only there was no salvation and they took it out on the statues. Took it out on the gods or heroes who failed them.

June knew that some of her friends had done the same. It was odd, but there were more atheists and maltheists in the afterlife than there ever had been when she’d been alive. If I hadn’t run into Teacher, or my friends, and just had memories of dying in a classroom, everyone else dying alongside me… June shivered. At least it had been fast. These dinosaurs, the first sapient beings of Earth, had lasted long enough to starve or freeze when the cold and dark came.

Another shriek echoed through the air. Closer.

“C’mon!” Hank shouted, pulling June after him as he ran up the steps to the top of the ziggurat, dodging the dead bodies. June followed him. They were heading towards the portal halfway up the ziggurat, the portal only showing darkness beyond.

“I—crap!” Searing pain tore across June’s back as one of the hunters slashed down with razor-sharp talons. But then it broke off with a shriek as Hank pulled June inside.

“Why didn’t they follow us?” June gasped in pain as she moved, blood trickling down her back from the deep gouges in her skin.

“June, sit down. I can help you.”

“No, I can do it.” June shook her head. This is just a memory, not a real body. She closed her eyes, once again channeling the memories of her body, her real body. Teacher had shown her how to do this, and she didn’t need any particular memory for it. Just remembering how she’d been healthy and happy…

Slowly, the pain subsided. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it. Then June nodded. “I’m better. Hank, why didn’t they follow us inside?”

“That would be me, youngling.”