Bobby slowly pushed open the door and unpeeled himself from his seat, long journeys were the worst. He took a few steps and stretched to wake up his legs.
“Ahh, that’s better” he said, springing straight to his feet when he was done. “I need some food before we begin”
Gary grumbled at him, “Wait a minute will you, I need to loosen my joints and I’m double your age!”
Bobby smirked, “I’ll get us some of whatever they’re selling.”
He stepped into the fast food joint they had arrived at, this one was owned by FruityTECH and screens on every available surface, some even floating midair, glared brightly at him with countless meal deals and special promotions.
Ignoring all the devices intended for ordering he walked to the front of the restaurant and gave his order directly to a confusedly blinking employee, who looked like he’d never taken an order in person before. Actually he probably hasn’t.
The employee eventually figured out how the old till worked and the takeaway meal arrived in less than a minute. Bobby gave his thanks and eagerly snatched it up before sauntering back to the van.
Gary looked up as he approached and curiously opened the box Bobby handed him. “Yum”, he said, looking at the steaming amalgamation of printed lab-grown bacon, cheese and potato. Bobby distributed the rest of the food before sitting in the open back door of the van and fishing in a box of random junk he had taken from his loft for the trip. Deep in the bottom of the box his hand found what it was looking for and he pulled out an ancient looking holo-satnav.
The machine booted to life with a sparking illusion of a hovering compass and a horrifying mechanical shriek that slowly evolved into coherent speech. “EEEEEEEEEEEE-ello and thank you for buying the Transplanetary-Omni-Directing-Device or TODD, please wait while we download the latest city maps from our servers.”
A kaleidoscopic pinwheel appeared hovering midair and froze. “I told you those things are useless!” Gary proclaimed as he walked round the van, “They put more effort into designing the aesthetics than they did into functionality.”
Bobby whacked the device with his hand, exercising percussive maintenance to the best of his abilities. Miraculously the pinwheel began moving again and the machine continued to set itself up.
“TODDNAV, a proud subsidiary of Skylink has all the maps you might need, upgrade to the TODDDOT from a local car retailer for maximum navigation efficiency. Maps have been found for NEW NEW YORK, simply ask and be directed!”
Bobby smirked at Gary and spoke to TODD. “Please direct us to the nearest graveyard.”
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The satnav blinked and a 3D route presented itself, looking more like a broken spiderweb than a route. Bobby got in the driver's seat and shoved the ancient machine into one of the cupholders. “My turn to drive!”
New New York’s road structure was a labyrinthine mess of new and old, meshed together in such a way that it completely defied all logic and sensibilities, past a certain depth they hadn’t even bothered to properly maintain half the roads, meaning they had to slowly bump over the dozens of potholes to avoid breaking the vans axel. One time they even had to turn around because the satnav directed them into a clogged road full of decaying car corpses.
At least Bobby didn’t get lost much as most of the time they just needed to go lower and it was fairly obvious which roads went up and which went down. This continued for quite a while until they eventually passed into the eternally gloomy Undercity. Bobby had to turn the headlights and windscreen wipers on at this point as there was not much light filtering down from above anymore, only miles and miles of decaying buildings interspersed with giant metal support pillars to hold the city above up. Also drips, unidentified liquids filtering down everywhere, mostly black in colour, but some not, staining the bricks of what might have once been nice architecture with the gothic gloom often associated with fantasy necropolis.
He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Do you think anyone lives down here anymore?”
Gary hummed and scratched the stubble of his badly shaved beard. “People live everywhere you know, it’s like a challenge ingrained into the human race's genes.” As if to prove him right a childish laugh echoed from somewhere in the distance, making them both shiver. No one spoke after that, besides the occasional directions the satnav gave.
The road wiggled through a maze of old buildings, many of them partially slumped over, some blocking the way, making them have to take large detour routes. The dark windows seemed to reflect no light, empty panes sitting in broken frames like hungry voids.
Bobby felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle like they were being watched, but he played it off as a figment of his imagination and soon the feeling went away.
“Oh no, looks like you have hit another dead end. Please make a U-TURN” said the satnav cheerfully for the umpteenth time, Bobby used one hand to cover the device as Gary made a bid to lob it out the window.
Luckily they didn’t have to endure much more of the annoying voice as they soon drove into a decaying neighbourhood, that was immediately evident as their destination by the twisted wrought iron gates
Bobby had seen lots of a particular type of old movies, so he’d been expecting a quaint little church with neatly ordered headstones, but this was completely different to those meadowy affairs.
Stained slabs jutted up at all angles from the edge of the graveyard, crammed in like the teeth of some ancient giant eager to gobble up unsuspecting passersby. Death reeked from the area in a fashion that he’d never really experienced before, probably heightened by his new magical perception.
Out of curiosity he opened his third eye and was met with a storm of black miasmic death energy, streaked through with ghostly forms in hysterical states of anguish, depression and insanity. Some of the ghosts repeatedly tried to leave the graveyard, but were pulled back by shining tethers which bound them to their undestroyed remains.
Bobby gulped at the morbid sight as he put the handbrake on and hesitated to turn the engine off. Eventually the key turned and the headlights shut off.
“Are you alright?” Gary asked him, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
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