"After the planet’s greatest cities evaporated under the might of antimatter and nuclear weapons, the few remaining survivors banded together, traveling a new world carved out of hatred and spite. United, they converged on a settlement far out from the destruction, a quaint town called Howden’s Peak. It was the work of a single pilot who defected in the early stages of the Great War that saved the last of humanity from succumbing to radiation. This is the story of Lazarus Karaiga." -Excerpt from The Life of Lazarus.

***

Alexandria is no stranger to her share of injuries. She’s lacerated, pricked, shocked, burnt, cut, bruised, and scraped herself enough times that she can’t remember the last time she hasn’t nursed wounds.

But her shoulder–she gasps, dropping her arm back to her side. Fuck. Her shoulder muscle is inflamed. Bruised. Splotches of purple curve toward her collarbone. When her fingers graze the skin, it shrieks in return, waves of pain washing down her arm.

“Seriously?” Alexandria groans. Even making a fist hurts. Her tendons, muscles, bones, and joints ache. In fact, everything aches. The run hadn’t been kind to her. Neither did the fall, apparently.

She’s supposed to meet up with Anna at the park today. But putting on her shirt almost killed her. It’s lying on her bed, rumpled up, staring mockingly at her.

I am not going to give up. She plucks it up and wrestles it over her head. Her good arm goes through the sleeve easily enough. It’s when she lifts her bad arm to do the same that a spike of agony shoots through her nerves.

She thrashes. Teeth gritted, Alexandria tears the shirt off and throws it onto her bed, panting heavily. She stares at herself in her bedroom mirror, sunken-eyed and bruised and completely different from the person she saw yesterday.

“It’s that stupid thing,” she whispers, gripping the countertop with her good hand. Every second, the gremlin-creature haunts the corners of her eyes. Shadows that dart away the moment she tries to lock onto them.

Even now, in the broad swathes of daylight streaming through her curtains, shadows leap between shafts of light, intangible. Any of them could be that creature.

Images flash of that thing eating the farmer’s liver. Its shriveled jaw slick with blood. Its wrinkled gray skin oozing black and greenish fluids. Its head squashed into folds of flesh heaped on one another, ears curling outward like crucified bat wings.

The images keep flashing. She’s powerless to stop that thing from invading her mind. No matter where she looks, the shadows are there, and her heart pounds until panic floods her arteries.

Alexandria slams her fist into the wall. “Just leave me alone!”

“Alexandria?” Her dad’s voice rumbles from just outside the door. She blinks away her tears of frustration and storms to the door.

“What?” she mutters, opening it to reveal her dad in all his… bathrobe glory? His jet black hair is combed back, still dripping water onto the carpet floor. “Weren’t you heading to work?”

He looks down, then frowns as if he just realized he’s in a bathrobe. “I heard you shout. It’s about what happened yesterday, isn’t it?”

Alexandria throws her head against the wall, digging her hand into her rumpled hair. Please, anything but what happened yesterday. Don’t you see my eyes? I couldn’t sleep because the nightmares just wouldn’t stop. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He nods. “And that’s fine. I understand. I wanted to let you know that if you need somebody–not to talk to, just be there for you–I can do that. Okay?” Her dad pats her good shoulder, then lightly squeezes. “I know we don’t see each other much these days, but I want you to know I love you. And I mean it.”

Alexandria’s crossing the threshold of the doorway before her dad can react. She gives him a fierce one-armed hug and smiles, even when her insides are mush and her body hurts.

“I love you too, dad. And don’t worry. I’ll get over it.” Another shadow darts in the hallway. She pretends she didn’t see it. “I swear, if I need somebody to talk to, you’ll be the first person.”

“Sometimes it’s okay to take a break, Alexandria.”

Her dad doesn’t look pressed for time at all, even when by the time she usually awakens he’s out of the house. “Are you taking a break today?”

“For you. Because we haven’t had a day to ourselves together in a while.”

Alexandria shoves down her worries, her memories, her pain down until it’s a tiny compressed ball. Finally, the weight in her chest loosens and she can breathe.

It’s glorious. All that comes to mind is what they’re going to do for the rest of the day.

“My arm is killing me. Let’s go visit that new museum they opened downtown. Anna told me it was good.”

Her dad starts toward his room. “I’ve been meaning to visit, too. It’s not every day you see something new here.” He turns his doorknob, stepping into his room. “I left breakfast on the table, if you’re hungry.” Before Alexandria asks, he calls out over his shoulder, “And no, they’re edible this time.”

Her cheeks stretch as she grins. Once he closes his bedroom door, she positions herself before the mirror, eyes alight with energy.

“I’m not letting you bother me again,” she says. The shadows don’t dart this time. Thank the stars. “We’ll find you and kill you, and next time we’ll know what to expect.”

Alexandria turns toward her shirt. A different story entirely.

She sighs.

It’s going to take a while.

***

“That’s an integrated circuit, and that’s a melted computer, and that’s one of those old phones I told you about last week…”

On and on Anna goes, bouncing from exhibit to exhibit, a bundle of barely restrained mania. Alexandria and her dad share amused glances as Anna explains each exhibit. For some, she briefly summarizes them. For others, she paces back and forth, chewing on her nails, gesturing wildly at the exhibit in mind.

“That’s a brain-computer interface. It took electrical signals our brains produce and allowed us to control anything. There was a whole cultural movement about it. People built custom machines they could control with their minds. Cars, drones, cameras, boats, anything. It’s incredible!”

To Alexandria, it’s a rusted lump of metal with several black cables trailing around it. Like a dejected mop head. She tries to imagine having one of those inside her head. How in the stars did they make it fit?

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Anna hops toward the next exhibit. “That’s half of an exoskeleton we dug up. A lot of people didn’t trust robots to do construction jobs even though they were super safe, so construction workers wore these suits. Master Brown told me they could carry two tons.”

“Two tons?” The exoskeleton is little more than a metal framework approximately shaped like a human. Alexandria can’t imagine that thing even walking on its own.

“The archives might have something on that. I know they were used a lot, though. Howden’s Peak had several before the EMP waves fried everything.”

Half the words coming out of Anna’s mouth means nothing to Alexandria. Yet, she smiles at every explanation Anna gives, because if she’s happy being here, then that’s enough for her.

A junked car, several hoverboards snapped in half, an electric bike, a nanite capsule. Dead remnants of a world fantastically better in every way. Another junked car, a TV, a gaming system, a drone. Alexandria’s heart aches.

They could’ve been great. Stupid human selfishness destroyed them. And for what? They had everything.

A shattered core of an AI substrate, a plasma gun, twin ocular implants, a block of cosdium alloy, the strongest material ever invented. Technology from long ago swirls around Alexandria’s head until a headache buds near her temple.

Luckily, after Anna finishes explaining what solar generators did, they move into the next corridor. Their footsteps echo in the narrow tunnel. Anna takes the lead, silent, and the change is so jarring Alexandria clears her throat.

“That was cool. Thanks, Anna,” she says.

“You haven’t seen the best part yet.” In the shadow, Anna’s pearlescent smile shines. “Mr. Cascada, you wrote a biography on Lazarus Kairaga a while back, right?”

Alexandria’s dad adjusts his polo shirt. “That I did. Are you showing us some of his possessions?”

Anna turns on her heel. “Oh, you’ll see. The biggest one of all.”

Moments later, they step into floodlights. It takes a moment for Alexandria’s eyes to adjust, and when they do, she gasps.

Dominating the room, an intimidating bulk of sculpted lines, hard angles, and smooth curves rests on a raised platform. Ropes separate a crowd from the spectacle, the one thing that she never expected to see in her lifetime.

A fighter jet.

“You… you found his jet.” Her dad takes a few steps forward, eyes widened. His arms fall to his sides. “When I researched everything I could, I learned he had ejected because his cockpit was struck by a drone. The jet was lost to the sea.”

“Well, technically it was the masters who found it, not me. He did eject, but the jet didn’t fall into the sea. No, it kept going even with the damage it took.”

Anna gestures to follow her. They go around the crowd, and once on the other side Alexandria understands.

There’s a gaping hole where the cockpit would be. She’s seen old footage of how planes used to work, how when war broke out they swarmed the skies and destroyed countless cities.

Alexandria at least knows the jagged hole shouldn’t be there. Rust decorates the edges where metal was shorn off, but otherwise, it looks as new as the day it flew.

Lazarus himself once flew that plane. He had the bravery to defect and save Howden’s Peak when the world was dying. She wants to brush her fingers on the metal, see if maybe, just maybe, she can imagine it soaring through the skies, when Anna speaks.

“It sort of landed at the edge of the boundary, where the trees start. They figured it out a few years ago when Master Villes noticed that old-growth trees were missing. And then boom: they found it almost buried completely.”

Alexandria’s dad tucks his hands into his pockets. He squints, lips pressing together. “How did they bring it here?”

“They dug it out. Then they built a pulley system to lift it out of the hole and dragged it for miles until they were almost to the city. After that I’m not sure. I think they built a giant cart for it, but don’t quote me on that.”

Alexandria paces down the length of the fighter jet. She comes close enough to see the dents, scrapes, and scratches that its sleek hull sustained, centuries of weathering and erosion.

How did this metallic beast survive for so long? Metal rusts, the whole breaks into parts, and then some more–she’s replaced enough tools to know. Anna is not lying.

Her dad steps beside her, hand stroking his chin, eyes squinted in deep thought. “It’s a miracle Howden’s Peak survived the Great War, don’t you think?”

Alexandria runs her good hand over the rope enclosure. “It’s a miracle we’re here at all when the rest of the world mutated.” For the first time in hours, a shadow dashes within the crowd. She ignores it, concentrating on the impact crater, the rusted components of shorn metal. Her fingers dig into the rope. It hurts, and she relishes the sensation. “The mutants are evolving every day and we’re not. Stuff like this fighter jet is impossible to build. We’re stagnated.”

“Patience, Alexandria.” Her dad clasps her good shoulder.

“If you saw things the way I do, you’d get it.” She sighs. “Sorry, I'm all doom and gloom. I’m kind of bad at being cheerful.”

“Hey, are you okay?” Anna asks. The lilt in her voice is gone. Alexandria shakes her head and starts toward the next corridor feeding into the final exhibit. A giant sign overhead displays a single word. It’s an exhibit of things she knows too well.

Mutants.

“It’s about them,” she explains once Anna and her dad start following her. They emerge into a hallway, stone arches breaking it up like ribs. Several chandeliers dangle between each stone rib, casting shadows against the walls.

And of course, because of the low lighting, the taxidermied mutants look even more terrifying, their snarling faces shown in deep contrast to paler flesh. Alexandria points at a giant bird with a wingspan easily twice as long as her.

“That’s a mutated vulture. We call them hellbirds because they don’t scavenge anymore like in the old days. If they see you, run.” Alexandria shudders at the next exhibit. “Those are salamanders. They’re getting smarter with each new generation. If they see you, run.”

If Anna was the spark of fire inspiring them, Alexandria is the water dousing the flames, leaving little more than ashes and smoke clogging her throat. She forces the words out, but each mutant makes her stutter a few times as her mind whirs to moments when she’d seen them personally.

“Those are frogs. Actually, they’re not too bad. They don’t really attack.”

Unlike Anna, Alexandria spends at most thirty seconds explaining each exhibit, refusing to elaborate how she knows more than what the affixed plaques say.

They stop at the longest exhibit so far. Segmented body parts extend several dozen feet. Tufts of cherry red fur poke out where a body segment transitions into the next. “Those are millipedes. Don’t confuse them for centipedes. It’s literally the difference between life and death.”

Her dad massages his hands. Anna gnaws on her cuticles, eyebrows knitted together. She opens her mouth, then shuts it, resuming her frown.

“Want to get out of here?” Alexandria says.

“If you want to talk about what happened last night, I’m here. I won’t judge.” Anna extends her hand. Alexandria takes it, squeezing. “But maybe somewhere else? It’s a little crowd–”

Somebody shrieks. Alexandria whips her head to the source, a young boy standing at the end of the hallway. He takes several steps back until his back connects with an exhibit. He glances at the hulking pelt of a mutant bear and jumps away, squealing.

“What’s going on?” she calls out, jogging toward. The boy violently trembles. He hides behind her, sniffling.

“A monster–it–it broke the glass. It’s gone. I saw it run away. It was so scary.”

Glass crunches under her boots. Alexandria rushes in front of the exhibit. Her skin crawls, time coming to a standstill. Her body is not her own as she reaches out and touches a patch of fur stuck to the base of the pedestal. Several wires snapped off, their ends split or bent.

There’s only one exit. And several patches of fur lead right to it.

How? Why? How?

She reads the plaque. Unknown mutant. Discovered near the lighthouse, neutralized by Rhodes. Theorized to be a raccoon or fox.

No dates. Unknown could be anything. Unknown could be the gremlin creature. “Fuck,” she whispers. The shadows dart around her. It can’t be possible that a taxidermied mutant was still alive.

They’re not invincible. They’re creatures of flesh and blood, even under all that protective armor their mutations give them. Otherwise Lazarus would’ve been overrun decades ago.

“Oh, no,” Anna squeaks out, clasping a hand over her mouth.

“The mutants are evolving,” her dad says softly. “These are all dead specimens. They’re taxidermied. Does resurrection come with a mutation?”

“I–I don’t get it. This one was taxidermied, too. Look.” Alexandria stares at the remains of the exhibit. It’s not possible, it can’t be possible, it can’t be.

The museum is at the heart of the city, and an unknown, extremely dangerous mutant just defied death and escaped.

The people with the skills to kill them are at the edges of the city. Too much time.

Alexandria does what she knows best. She runs.