The earth opened and the monsters came, and it was the end of the world. But it didn’t feel like it because we were still here.

There was never a time I can remember where the creatures did not lurk in the shadows, kidnapping stray helpless children or hapless adults; sometimes it would be that someone of Golgotha would go missing and whispers over breakfast would be the consequences of it. Funerals were frivolous, even if there were sometimes candles lit in the absence of the missing. Generally, it would be the elders that would sit around wooden tables, hum old hymns and maybe they would whisper a few kind words to Elohim or Allah or perhaps a more pagan variety; I came from a fully loaded Christian household where the paganistic murmurs were often seen as little better than the monsters that came from the earth.

Whatever the case may be, it was simple mourning, simple human mourning and it was sad and miserable and more numbing every time I’d see it happen. Sometimes it would be Lady (she was an old shamanistic-style woman with tattered robes and graying hair, even some whiskers on her chin too) that would culminate a hymn in the streets with her incense or more for the missing, but it was Christian and good in that way. Always about Jesus, always good clean words and simple gospels that were quiet and weak.

It was a young woman that’d gone missing sometime the previous night; there’d been a patrol sent out among the old ruins too because the missing girl was the daughter of a Boss. The Bosses were distinguished leaders in Golgotha, due to their tendency for extreme and untempered cruelty and whenever someone crossed a Boss or whenever a Boss lost something precious, everyone took notice, because the Bosses controlled the functions of Golgotha. It just so happened the Boss whose daughter went missing was also the fellow that controlled the water supply. His name was Harold and that wily sonofagun shut off the pumps that moved ground water into our homes. He was the only one with the key and said he’d not divulge it to a soul if the girl wasn’t returned.

Some of the boys on the compound cultivated a posse with impassioned cries of mutual aid and such, but Boss Harold, no matter how much they threatened or how many of his fingers they snapped in their desperate grasp for humanity, would not comply. Most of the boys surmised it was likely the girl was dead and her remains would be impossible to find due to the way monsters tended to grind bones into powder and dry swallow even the gristle of our fragile bodies; there’d be nothing left—or if there was anything left of her it wouldn’t be her any longer (assuredly she’d be a husk or unworthy of saving). When hard torture failed, the boys cried for more reason, and yet Boss Harold would not budge. The old Boss said, “I’ll stop the motor of the world until she’s found!”

A group of rabblerousing youths had absconded with his daughter or so he said; the reality was much more likely that she had run from home of her own free will either by wanderlust or ignorance. When all was said and done, the families came to me and said, “Hey, Harlan, buddy, pal, you’ve lost weight. You’re looking good, Mister Harlan, did you get a haircut?”

I’d heard about the girl. I’d heard about the posse sent out to Boss Harold’s abode—the compound ain’t that big—and knew they’d be coming for me because I was a scavver, a person that wades through the old ruins either for illusory history pages or weapons or even (and this one was a rare treat) lost people. I knew they’d come for my services and had already put together my pack for travels with rations and light tools—no gun; drawing attention in the old ruins was a dumb thing because sound could travel forever.

“I’m going,” I told the group that’d been sent for me, “I don’t reckon any of you’d like to come with me?” I looked over the dirty faces, the faces of men, women, children that could scarcely be called grown, and none stood out because they were all tired and dirty and I imagined I looked much the same.

Then a girl’s voice broke out from the crowd, and she stumbled forward from the line of strangers that’d come to see me at my door. “I’ll go!” she said, “I want to go with you, Mister Harlan.”

It was unsurprising. Youngsters always thought the old ruins were like a field trip, like maybe they’d find a souvenir for their sweetie and come home with a good story. Most didn’t come back, and those that did usually came back with scars beneath the skin from what they’d seen in the out there. It was like a game for them and when they saw what the world outside the walls held, they would retreat into themselves for fear. It wasn’t just the monsters. It was the ruins themselves, the overwhelming demolition of us; we were gone and yet we were here. It’s a hard thing to cope. I looked over the skinny girl with a grimy face; she couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Her hair was cropped very short, and I could see no immediate deformities that might slow my travels, so I asked, “What’d your parents say?”

Without flinching, the girl shouldered her pack straps with her thumbs and almost cheerily answered, “They’re dead, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir.” I stepped nearer her, looked over her face and saw perhaps a will I’d not seen in some time. Maybe she would be more of a help than a hinderance. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Yes.”

“Then we leave immediately.” I shouldered my own pack and followed up with, “Do not bring any fucking guns.”

“Got it! No fuckinguns.” Her tone was sarcastic, but not unserious. It was the best I could hope for, and besides it was always better whenever I travelled with someone else.

We took off from my small hidey-hole and moved through the narrow stretches of street, tall metal and concrete stood on either of our sides, mostly housing and hydroponics, with a few spots with stools where a person could stop in for a drink of cool water. Although a few of the Bosses had toyed with the idea of expanding the hydroponics so that we might produce corn whiskey in bulk, this was scrapped when the math was done; the space was insufficient for such luxuries, but this did not stop some from fermenting small berries in batches when no one else was paying attention. Wine was incredibly rare, had a moldy taste to it, but was sweet and a further reminder of maybe why we held on. I liked wine pretty good, but sometimes I’d find an old bottle in the ruins or get a jug of liquor from one of the far settlements and that’s what I really cherished.

“You ever been out of town?” I asked her.

“No.”

“Don’t act a hero, don’t be funny out there, don’t make noise, don’t get in my way. If I tell you something, you do it without questions.”

First, I heard her footsteps fall slowly, then more quickly before she answered me as though she had to stop and think about what she was going to do next; perhaps she was having second thoughts? “Don’t try to scare me from the ruins,” she said, “I’ve wanted to go out there for years now and everyone always says there’s old stuff. Our old stuff. Stuff that used to belong to us.”

“Used to belong to us? What do you mean?”

“Humans or whatever. It used to be ours.”

“It hasn’t been ours within my lifetime. Leave it to them, because it’s theirs now. If you find some small thing out there that you like, then take it, but otherwise, it ain’t home no more.” There was no need for me to elaborate on who I meant whenever I said them, because anyone knew exactly who they were: the creatures from beneath the earth, the demons, the monsters.

We came to the outer sections of town near the gate and the walls stood high over our heads while morning breeze kicked up spirals of sand wisps across the ground. The walls were probably fifty or sixty feet tall, and several yards thick with titanium and concrete and rebar; along the parapets of our fortifications were patrolmen that watched the horizon and fired at anything that moved with fifty-caliber bullets. The men up there, and they were mostly men (the show-off types), wore ballistic weaves, bent and tarnished war helmets of the past, and carried mottled fatigue colors on their bodies like for-real militiamen. There hadn’t been an attempt on Golgotha from the monsters in days; it was a quiet week.

The nearest dirt street spilled into an open square with sandbag barricades overlooking the gate from atop a small hill. I waved down Maron. Boss Maron wore boots and an old-school cowboy hat with an aluminum star pinned on its forehead center; he swaggered over, “Going out, Mister Harlan?” His mustache caterpillar wiggled, nearly obscuring a toothy grin.

I nodded.

“It’s ‘cause Harold ain’t it?”

I nodded.

“You know that crazy bastard had some of my guards lock up the boys that stormed his home? If you ask me, he deserved whatever pain those fellas brought to him for shutting the pumps off.”

I idly studied the sidearm holstered on his hip then looked at the nearby guards by the gate, each with automatic weapons slung across their chests. “You still locked them up, didn’t you?”

Boss Maron spat in the dirt by his feet and laughed a little dry. “Sure did. Harold’s got the key to the water, and I won’t be crossing him. Don’t want the riffraff questioning Bosses.” He flapped his hand at the notion then swaggered away and waved at his guards to open the gate. The one nearest a breaker box on the righthand side of the gate opened the electrical panel, flipped a switch then the hydraulics on the gate began to decompress as it unlocked and rusty gears began to rock across one another to slide the great, tall metal door open.

“Try not to lose any fingers or toes while you’re out there. Oh!” he seemed to take notice of the young girl following me, “Got a new companion? Does she know what’s happened to the last few that’s traversed those desperate lands with you?”

“Hm?” asked the girl.

“Oh? Harlan?” Boss Maron smiled so hard I’d think his mustache might fall of his face from the sheer tension of the skin beneath it, “He’s a real globetrotter, quite a dealmaker, but just don’t be surprised if he leaves you behind.” This was followed by a sick chuckle.

I refused to respond and merely watched the clockwork gate come to a full open while the guards on either side prepared to angle their guns at the opening like they half-expected something to come barreling towards them. The doorway was empty and through the haze of the wasteland I could scarcely make out the familiar angles of the old ruins far out.

The girl didn’t engage either, for which I was thankful.

Boss Maron wide-stepped closer then patted my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Don’t forget the shiny flag.” He tucked a foil sheet into my front shirt pocket, “His daughter was due west supposedly. Good luck.” Then he clapped me on the back before returning to his post by the sandbags where a small table displayed his game of solitaire.

We moved through the gate, and I could sense the uneasy rhythm of the young girl’s movement just over my shoulder. As the gate closed behind us with a large and final shudder, I heard her breath become more erratic.

“The air feels thicker out here,” she said.

“It is sometimes,” I tried talking the nerves out of her, “It’s hot and cold all at the same time, ain’t it? Know what I mean? It’s hot devil air, but also you feel chills all over, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Her pace quickened so that we walked alongside one another.

“It’s just the nerves. You get used to it. Or. Well.”

“Or?”

“Or you don’t get enough time to.”

“What did ol’ Maron mean about other people dying with you?”

“Not many people venture outside the compound and even fewer go into the ruins. It’s all very dangerous. Most don’t make it back. That’s all he meant.”

“But you do. Make it back, I mean.”

I sighed. “I do, yeah.”

“My name’s Aggie, by the way. Sorry I didn’t say that before, Mister Harlan.”

“What’d your parents do when they were still around?”

“Dad was a farmer that worked with the hydroponics and Mom was a general fixer. She liked making clothes when we had the material.”

“Good people, it sounds like.”

“Sometimes,” said Aggie, “Hey, please don’t let me die, alright?” The words weren’t constructed so much as blurted; they came as a joke but did not seem like one.

“Okay.”

For a mile out in a measured circle, there was open sandy, flat ground stretching from around the perimeter walls of Golgotha; all the clutter, junk, and buildings had been disposed of years prior to grant the compound’s snipers comfortable sights in all directions. The openness went out for a mile and in every direction, one could see the ruins, the crumpled dead vehicles, half-snapped spires that lie in angles, and the gloom-red tint in the air that seemed to emanate from the ground like heat waves off fire. It was scarred air, where the creatures had unearthed some great anomaly from beneath the dirt. In honesty, it was like passing through the foul stench of death and painted everything in a blood hue. It stank and it was hot and it was cold.

We moved in relative silence; only the sounds of our boots across granular dirt or the clink of zippers whenever either Aggie or I was to readjust the packs on our shoulders. As we came upon the edges of the ruins, where we entered the red mist, and the air was alien. Finally, Aggie cleared her throat and mentioned through mildly exerted breathing, “Think we’ll find her?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Keep quiet and whisper. We can talk but keep it low.” We began to enter the thick of the ruins where ancient structures crept up on either side of us. “What made you come with me?” It was a question I’d wondered the whole time and figured her reasoning was weak.

“There’s not much home. I’d like to see some of the world before I go. Seems like things get worse and worse and for when I do leave this world, I want to see something other than the walls of home.”

“Fair answer.” Her reasoning was weak. “What if you’ve bit off more than you can chew?”

“Maybe.” She followed this up with another question of her own,” What made you start venturing out?”

“I wanted to see something other than the walls of home.” I felt a smile creep around the corners of my mouth, but quickly tempered myself. “Whenever people go out on their own without a guide, they die. I doubt we’ll find Harold’s daughter.” I left a pause. “You’re nearly her age, ain’t you? Did you ever know her?”

“You speak like she’s dead for sure.”

“Most likely, she is. Did you know her?”

“No, but I guess I’m an optometrist.”

“Optimist,” I corrected.

“Whatever. She’s a piece of home. I feel like I’m old enough to take care of myself and I want to help people. Not everyone thinks that way, but we’re all one big family, aren’t we?”

“While I appreciate your thoughts on it, I doubt the daughter of a Boss would feel the same about you.”

“The Bosses protect us.”

The ruins began to swallow us whole as we ventured through the ancient pathways, broken asphalt and wreckage littered the wide-open street. A nearby, worn post named the path: Fif Aven. I’d gone there before and left most things untouched. Although there were a few open holes in the structures on either side—places where large entryways might’ve gone hundreds of years ago—they were mostly empty, black with shadow, and picked clean long long ago. Non ideal for an alcove of respite from the open air. We shifted down the street, my eyes darting from old signs and vehicles bent and rusted and abandoned. I motioned for Aggie to come closer as I sneaked through the rubble towards a wall where there were no entryways into the monolithic structures. We hugged the wall and moved with trepidation, sometimes climbing across overturned wreckage tiptoeing in our boots to muffle all sound. Every footfall felt like a scream.

“We should go on for another mile or so before we find a place to rest. I know one up the way.”

“Rest? Are you tired already? That’d burn what daylight we have,” said Aggie.

I shook my head, “The last thing you want is to be without your wits in a place like this. If you’re too tired to run, you’re too tired to live.”

“Aren’t they fast? If they catch you in the open, they’ll get you, won’t they?”

I thought of a lie then thought better, “Yes.”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Oh.”

“If you see one. Don’t scream. Don’t even breathe. If they haven’t seen you, you still have a chance.”

The air grew wet and smelled of chlorine, and I snatched Aggie’s sweating hand in my own before grappling her into my arms; she was small and fought noiselessly for only a second before going still. I shifted us into a concrete doorway with a half-destroyed awning and whispered a quick hush as I glided us near a piece of wreckage.

I felt her tenseness leave and let go of her before she crouched alongside me in the shadowed cover of an old van that had, ages before, slammed into a nearby wall. The door of the vehicle had been removed and we angled in slowly, silently, crawling towards the rear of its cabin to peer from the broken windows, all the while hoping its old axles would not creak. Feeling her hand on my shoulder, I twisted round to look Aggie in the eye; terror erupted from her face in tremors while she mouthed the words: what’s that?

Simply, I put a finger to my lips and took a peek at the thing moving down Fif Aven. The creature was on the smaller side, closer to the size of a run-of-the-mill human, but twitched its muscles in a fashion that contested humanity. The thing walked upright on two feet, but sometimes used its hands to move like an animal. The most intricate and disturbing of its features, however, was its head. With vibrant green skin, with speckles of yellowed globules across the surface of its body (likely filled with creamy pus), with a mishappen balloon head that first opened in half with a mouth folded as an anus, dispersed a corrosive gas into the air while it deflated, then reinflated and quivered—the creature’s head moved as a sack filled with misty gas, wobbly and rubbery. It had no eyes, no other features besides that awful head.

We watched it go, stop, disperse its toxic mist into the air, then leave. I kept my eyes on it, nose and mouth tucked beneath the collar of my shirt, and glanced at Aggie to see she’d followed suit. The smell could choke.

Once I was certain the thing had decided to move well outside of earshot (not that it had ears) I motioned for Aggie to follow me out of the van, down the sidewalk, through an intersection of roads, and into a small opening in one of the smaller structures. Our feet were swift, and I was grateful she was graceful. We moved through the darkness of the structure, and I led with intimate knowledge of the place. There was a safe spot near the rear of the building. I reached out in the dark, felt a handle and pushed into a small closet and pulled Aggie through.

My lantern came alive and bathed us in a warm glow. Shelves across the small room were lined with various supplies I’d left. A few boxes of matches, oil for lanterns, a bedroll, blankets, and other miscellaneous baubles.

Aggie inhaled sharply, “I’ve never seen anything like that! It was. I don’t know. It was weird and gross. Little scary. Is that what they look like?”

I shifted around onto the floor and opened my pack while placing the lantern between my legs. “You’ve been up on the compound’s walls before, ain’t you?”

“Once.”

“Well, sometimes those things get closer to home. I don’t know what you’d call them. Some of the wall guys call them fart heads because when you shoot one in the head with a rifle it goes pfffft. Lotta’ that chlorine shit comes out of them too.”

“Do bullets kill them?” She asked while removing her own pack and fixing her legs alongside mine in the closet; it was a snug fit, but we managed. “Like really kill them or does it just empty those heads?” I could feel her shaking still.

“If you use enough, sure. Durable, but manageable if you have enough firepower. Those are small fries. Normally they wouldn’t sneak up on me though. Normally I’d smell them from far off before they ever get close.”

“Did I distract you?”

“Maybe.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“It was bound to happen, I reckon.” I plunged my hand into my pack and removed a water gourd, taking a deep swallow from it.

She started, “Have,” she stopped then started again, “I wish,” another stop came then she gave up on whatever she was going to say and laid her pack across her lap, seemingly searching for something within.

“We should rest up here for a while. At least until you’ve calmed yourself. Then we’ll set out. Maron said the girl went west. You should have that detail in case this trip happens to be my last. I figured we’d search the northern area first then make our way south, but—I hope she ain’t south.” I exposed the face of my compass.

A thought seemed to occur to Aggie while she removed her own water gourd and took a healthy swig. Sweat glistened off her brow in the dancing light of the lantern, its fire caught in her pupils while she thought. “You don’t actually think you’ll find her, do you?”

I grinned, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“You think she’s dead already, so why do it?”

“Because they’ll believe me when I come back. I suppose we’ll return in two days, maybe three, then tell them we found her corpse.”

“Well why don’t we just stay here for the remainder?”

“We’ll look for her,” I said.

“But why?”

“It’s the right thing to do, I suppose. Maybe your optometristism is rubbing off on me.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” said Aggie, but I could see her sheepish grin. She held out a hand flat across her eyes and watched the nervous tremors in her fingers.

“Just nerves,” I told her.

“It’s a little exciting.”

“Now that’s a dangerous thought,” I took another swig from my water gourd before returning it to my pack. “Do you know where your parents hailed from?”

“Somewhere up north. Cold lands, but it was hard not to freeze in the winter up that way. Said they came down here years before I was born, hoping they could find a place to settle, but it was all the same. That’s what they said.”

“Never been further north than Golgotha, if I’m being honest. I’m from a place that once was called Georgia, but I’ve not been there in years.”

“Is it true what they told me, Mister Harlan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it the same everywhere? Is there no place around that’s not got those awful things?”

“If there’s a place like that, I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Mom used to read to me when I was a little kid,” she said, “I never could pick up reading, but she loved old books that were written before bad times and in those books, people talked about things like green fields that stretched on forever, and places where water streams were clear enough to drink from. Do you remember anything like that?”

I chuckled while continuing to rummage through my pack, “Geez, how old do you think I am? All that was a long time ago.”

“Yeah. You think it’ll ever be like that again?”

I shook my head. “Wishful thinking.” Then I found what I’d been searching for and removed it from my pack. A small tin of tobacco; I sat to rolling a makeshift cigarette then lit it off the lamp.

“That smells funny.”

“Yeah.”

We shared the cigarette in the dark closet, passing it back and forth; her lungs, not being used to the smoke, forced from Aggie a few whimpering coughs that she tried to hide in the hem of her shirt.

I ducked the tobacco out beneath my heel and began reorganizing my pack so that it was less lumpy. “I hope you’re ready for it again. Like I said, that one you saw was a small fry. There’s bigger things out there. Worse things.”

“Should I go, or should I just stay here?” She hadn’t reorganized herself at all and remained seated while I shouldered my pack and peered through a crack in the door.

“Of course, you should come with me. I know it, you’re scared.”

“What if I make it worse and I attract one of those things right to you?” She asked.

I reached down and she took my hand; I lifted her to her feet and we met eyes, “Aggie, you’re coming with me. You’ll do fine. I promise.” It was not often that I’d try and charm someone, but I put forth a smile.

She smiled back and I shut off my lantern before leading her gently through the dark, into the open street where midday sun caught the ruins shadows long and deep. West was where the girl had gone and I intended to follow. Though I’d seen no signs of survivors, I was certain that if they’d braved the previous night, they were likely about in the daytime. Certainly, things would be made easier if I could cup hands around my mouth and echo my voice through the dead city like a game of Marco-Polo. Aggie maintained both energy and quiet alongside me as we moved through the rubble, vaulting over wide-open holes in the street where I could spy the arteries of the dead beast (the old sewer network).

We conversed frankly and in whispers when we came upon a place in the road that was impassible on foot due to a collapsed structure and we stalked more like wounded deer in a forest than humans in a city; our shoulders remained slouched, our bodies were huddled near to each other, and we delved into the dark recesses of another building—possibly a market from old days when patrons congregated for frozen fish sticks. There were massive steel shelves and we took their avenues till we came upon an aperture on the far side of the dark building. We shifted over the broken glass of an old torn out window and landed firmly on an open street.

Then came a sound like firecrackers and I felt cold and Aggies eyes went wide in the dull evening glow of the sun.

“Someone’s brought a gun,” I said.

Before she could say anything, I hugged the wall on our side of the street and moved down the sidewalk, following the sound of those gunshots.

“Maybe it’s someone that could help us?” she tried.

I shook my head.

“What do you mean?” she whispered a bit louder.

“It’s bad news,” I said, then came to a full stop at a corner while another hail of bullets spat from some unseen weapon and echoed all around; we were getting much closer. “Have you ever seen a dead body?” I asked Aggie.

She shook her head, but then stopped. “I was the one that found my mom. She was stiff and cold.”

“She went peacefully?”

Aggie shook her head, “Flu.”

“Any blood?”

“No.”

“If you’re not ready for blood, you might not want to look.”

We rounded the corner to find a small blockade of burnt-out vehicles creating a barrier between us and the action.

Two men with assault rifles fired at a creature towering over them. The creature in question stood thirty feet tall on spindly legs like a spider, but each of its legs were tumorous and its muscles were strangely uneven and mushy; although an arachnid may have eight legs, this one moved sluggishly along on no less than twenty shambling stilts so that the rounded body where the legs met looked more akin to a sea urchin. Several of its long legs stood out on its sides to angle its body through the narrow corridor of the street, its whiskery feet pushing along the walls of buildings overhead. Its whole body stank of wet dog and brimstone.

The men—they looked like young militiamen of Golgotha—staggered in awe of the thing and attempted to walk backwards while reloading. Another spray of bullets erupted from their rifles, and they were empty and the men screamed and one of them tripped across some unseen thing on the ground.

Quick as a fly, one of the massive creature’s legs sprang onto the prone man’s abdomen. Their was a brief cry of pain and then—I felt Aggie pinch onto my shoulder with her thumb and forefinger and I glanced at her to see she’d chewed into the corner of her bottom lip for purchase in response to such a fantastical display of awfulness—the man had no skin, no clothes, he’d been stripped to runny red fibrous tissue with strips of white muscle that twitched in the presence of the air.

“Oh god please god!” screamed the other man while watching his comrade writhe in pain beneath the stalky foot of the skin-taker.

I shuffled lower among the arrangement of vehicles we’d taken refuge behind and me and Aggie breathed softly, glancing eye contact while sitting in the dirt. There wasn’t anything to say.

The sound of the spider creature removing the second man’s skin was slower, torturous, seemingly enjoyed; his screams did not end for too long. I fisted my hands into my jacket pockets then stared at the ground between my knees. I felt Aggie’s thin fingers reach into my pocket and it took me flinching to realize she intended to hold my hand. She was shaking and I was shaking, but she was good and did not scream. And we held hands while we listened to the thick trunks of the spider creature shift on away. And we didn’t move. And we were statues frozen like we belonged among the dead ruins. And we didn’t move. And then Aggie shifted to look before I’d gathered my feelings and motioned me on.

“What’s that?” she asked as simply as she’d asked the color of the sky.

“Bad.” I shook my head and looked for an opening in the blockade of vehicles.

Two meaty blood ponds marked where the men were and on approach, I covered my face in the collar of my shirt; Aggie lifted her forearm to her nose. The stench of the beast and of the viscera was strong in the air.

I examined the ground then found one of their rifles. Standard M16. The strap on the rifle was frayed to ribbons and the barrel of the gun appeared to be slightly bent, but salvageable. I handed the rifle to Aggie and she took it.

“What about no guns?” she asked.

“There’s no bullets left. Besides, it’ll be good to bring it back.” Examining what was left of the bodies, my eyes went away and into my mind where all things become ethereal and difficult to grasp; I looked without seeing and imagined a place where green grass was, a place like in the books Aggie’s mother read. No grass here. Just misery.

“Who were they?” she asked.

“The men?”

“Yeah.”

“They sent out a patrol looking for Boss Harold’s daughter. Looks like we’ve found it. Never should’ve sent them.”

“I want to go home,” said Aggie.

“Me too.” I blinked and shifted around to look at her through the red hue that’d gathered between us. Try as I might, the smile on my face almost hurt. “If you stick with me, you’ll be safe.”

We took up in one of the safehouses I’d developed over the past several years, a room hidden up two flights of stairs and large enough to host a party. In the lantern glow we heated rations—eggs and hearty bread with water-thinned weak tomato paste—then ate in relative quiet so that the only thing heard were our jaws over the food that tasted bitter; food always felt slimy and bitter in the ruins where the demons reigned supreme. Their stink was on us. Like sulfur, like rot, like sorrow.

I rolled us each a cigarette and we smoked while looking out through a brackish window that overlooked the black street. No lights in the darkness save blinking yellow eyes caught for moments in dull moonlight whose owners quickly skittered towards an alley.

“How don’t you get lost?” asked Aggie.

“I do sometimes.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“I mean, I know the ruins fine enough, I reckon, but then I feel like I’m drowning in it every time I come here.” I took a long draw from my cigarette, finished it, then planted it beneath my boot.

“Did you have parents?” she asked.

“Everyone has parents.”

“What were they like?” Aggie held her cigarette out from her like she didn’t actually want it, but just as I looked over at her, pulling my eyes from the window, she jammed it into her lips.

“They were fine. Just fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish it was better,” said Aggie.

“Don’t imagine there’s ever been a point in history where we didn’t want it to be better.”

“Maybe.” She coughed through smoke.

I moved to dim the lamp and sat atop my bedroll. “You should sleep.”

“Don’t think I could sleep. I’ll have nightmares.” She pitched the remainder of her cigarette.

“Can’t be worse than the real deal.”

I shut off the lamp and we laid in pitch black.

“How do you do it?” she asked.

“Most of the time, it feels like I’m not.” I stared at the ceiling I couldn’t see. “Go to sleep.”

At daybreak, we ate bread and water then gathered our things before setting into that awful wasteland. Sand gathered around our legs in wisps as we trundled tiredly onto the street of the ruins and Aggie said nothing. There wasn’t a thought in my mind as my joints protested at us climbing over the wreckage of an overturned semi-truck; first I went, then I hoisted Aggie up by her lanky arms then we jumped onto the other side, moving less like scouts and more like hungover comer-downers.

Passing through the ruins, each step feeling more like a glide and less creaky, Aggie spoke from over my shoulder as I kept my eyes sharp on the buildings’ shadows, “I doubt we’ll find her,” she said.

“What happened to the optimism?” I shifted to catch her face; she seemed dejected, tired, perhaps disillusioned by the previous day’s happenings.

“I didn’t know there were things like that in this world. Like that spider thing. Those men didn’t stand a chance.”

I shook my head, and we continued moving. “There are worse things still over the horizon. Most assuredly there is. Now you asked me before why I come out here in these ruins, why I’ve trekked the wasteland, and I’ll give you the opportunity to ask it again—maybe I’ll have something different to say.”

“Okay. Why then?”

“Because,” I kicked at a half eroded aluminum can left on the ground, “Places like Golgotha, or even where I’ve come from, there’s nothing like the red sky or the open road. There are no ties, no people. There’s only the next step.”

She took up directly beside me as we turned onto a street corner where the sidewalk mostly remained intact. “Sounds stupid to me.”

“There it is then.”

“Sorry,” she muttered, then she spoke even more clearly, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t get it.”

“It’s because I’m a dealmaker,” I said.

“That’s what Maron called you before, wasn’t it?” Aggie absently stared at the sky, at the edges of the high spires overhead that seemed to swallow us whenever clouds passed over the sun. “What’s that mean?”

“It means it’s harder for me to die.”

“Just luck, if you ask me.”

I clenched my jaw. “Probably, it is. Yeah.”

Then, with time, we came to the garden. A place in the ruins where greenery existed—even if the plants that grew from the soil were otherworldly and aggressive. There was the solitary sound of dirt catching crags in the structures as hard wind pushed silt through the narrow streets of the ruins, then there was also the sound of a flute, a flute made of bone and skin. The sound was sickly sweet, illusive, something no human could play even if they listened carefully and practiced for hundreds of years. There was the flute, the greenery, the clacking of hooves against old stone that’d risen from the earth much the same as the demons.

Aggie whispered, “What’s that music?”

I reached out my hand so that she would hold it and I tried to smile. “There are worse things still over the horizon.”

Her delicate scrawny fingers wrapped around my own and though I felt her trembling, she trusted me (I hoped she really did). I led her towards the garden, through a walkway with tall obelisks of flame on either side. “What is this place?” whimpered Aggie.

“If you are asked your name, tell it plainly without hesitation,” I said, “Do not leave my side. Do not run.”

“Where are we going?” her eyes scanned the garden, the flames dancing in the midday reddish light, the trees bent at impossible angles, the glorious green grass that looked cool and soft. I’d been in awe the first time I’d seen it.

I smiled, “Just like your mom’s old books. Green grass.”

The flute grew louder as we came closer and the hoof beats on stone shifted with enthusiasm.

There in the center of the garden stood Baphomet, ten feet tall, feminine midsection with goatish head and legs. It pranced with the flute to its mouth, and the tune resounded playfully all around. The creature danced across an area of stones in the center of the garden, a place where there were rock tables and chairs and sigils upon the ground—amid the open furniture, there stood a throne of human bones and near where Baphomet played its wily tune, there was a covered well, rope tautly hanging from its crank as if there was something heavy on the other end.

I smelled you coming, said Baphomet. Even as it spoke, it continued to play its flute without pause. Its muscular shoulders glistening with reddish sweat, its horns gloriously pointed and reveled in its merriment.

“Let us convene,” I said, mouth dry and feeling heady.

Convene?

“I’m here for the girl.”

I felt Aggie shift uncomfortably beside me, but I kept my eyes locked on Baphomet.

It seems you have one already.

“She came west, towards here two days ago. She was a runaway. You have her.”

Come, Harlan, come and dance with me. Baphomet did not stop its flute or its dancing.

I sighed. “I’m here to make a deal.”

Baphomet froze, allowing the boney flute to drop from its goatish lips. Its animal eyes casually switched between me then Aggie, before it turned to face us completely. A deal?

“Y-yes,” I nearly choked.

You’ve brought so little to bargain with. Baphomet shifted and walked to its throne to sit, clacking its long nails against the armrest. Unless. The creature allowed the word to hang against my brain like a splinter.

I lifted the hand holding Aggie’s. “A deal,” I tried.

Quick as a flash, Baphomet disappeared in a haze of black smoke then reappeared over Aggie’s shoulder. I dropped her hand and stepped away while the creature exhausted dew from its nose before sniffing Aggie’s ear.

Aggie swallowed hard, “Harlan?” she asked, “What’s it doing?”

“I’m sorry, Aggie.”

Baphomet took its hands through her short hair and inhaled sharply. A long tongue fell from its mouth and saliva oozed before it snapped its snout shut. The pleasure will be all mine.

“Harlan, let’s go—I want to go home.” Aggie’s tears rolled down her face in full while the large hand of Baphomet lightly squeezed her cheeks into a pucker.

You are home.

Baphomet took Aggie and moved her casually; her legs moved feebly, knees shaking.

Sit darling. Said Baphomet, motioning to its throne. Aggie took the chair and the creature snorted approval.

The demon moved jauntily to the well, where its strong arms began to roll the crank; with each rotation, the sound of cries grew closer. Until finally, all limbs pulled backwards in bondage, there dangled Boss Harold’s daughter; deep cuts and blood painted her mangled, distorted body. She’d been pushed into the well belly first, suspended by her wrists and ankles. I bit my tongue.

“Oh god,” I heard Aggie say. It sounded like a far-off girl from an unknown planet.

Baphomet lifted the girl from her bondage then sliced the rope with a razor-sharp fingernail. I hesitantly moved closer to the scene and removed my jacket.