The man approached their position. Andy was still deep in a delirious sleep beside her pile of clothes. Clara held the submachine gun iron sights on the newcomer, for what good it would do. She couldn’t engage with them or flee, not with Andy unconscious. Clara simply didn’t have a plan. She lay flat amongst the reeds, praying he didn’t spot them, unable to take her eyes off him. This group might be peaceful, but if they weren’t, Clara would just have to prove to them that bothering her wasn’t worth their blood or time.
The man stopped just five metres away from them, staring at their motorbike, lying in the weeds near the roadside. His expression was twisted beneath his hood. Clara had been certain he was wearing a mask, until he coughed and spat. His cheekbones were calloused like bark, his forehead and chiselled chin were bricks. He walked stiffly, as though his hips were fused at obtuse angles. He might not be human at all. He scanned the reeds. Clara ducked her head down, remaining deadly still, breathing into the wet dirt. She heard him take a few steps towards them, then stopped. Clara counted to ten and raised her head, expecting him to be standing above them. But the man was balanced on one leg, looking at the sole of his shoe. He grunted, scraping his boot against the pavement. There was a frog corpse stuck to his shoe.
A horn howled through the village, amplified by cone-shaped speakers on the wagon’s roof. “Endring,” a voice called as the battlewagon’s engine revved. “Come.”
The disfigured man eyed the pond suspiciously one last time before returning to his clan. Clara’s breathing steadied as she watched the lorry mount the curb, smashing the toad-shaped bin to pieces, trundling over the park away from them, dragging its large wagon section behind it. She stayed hidden as it continued up the road and out of sight. Could they have been following her and Andy? Perhaps they’d spotted their bike from a distance and were picking up the trail.
Clara dressed, keeping her ears on the road, then returned to Andy. He was mumbling deliriously. She checked his temperature, it had gone down since that morning. Still, they needed somewhere safe to rest for an early night, before they found civilisation. Clara’s wrist terminal had since died, she’d have to navigate the wasteland old-school.
In the distance, a hill rose above the village. It would make for a good vantage point to scour their surroundings. At dusk, any settlement in the area would light fires, and the smokestacks would give away their locations. The question was: would they be hiring? Every settlement needed fighters to hunt monsters and keep their borders secure, but many were unfriendly towards outsiders. Those settlements which were friendly often couldn’t offer more than a bath, bed and breakfast in exchange for work. Right now, she’d be willing to kill a few mutants if her employer threw in a bar of soap. But the best case scenario was finding someone with an AMC willing to hire it out at a reasonable fee.
Slinging her gun over her back, Clara loaded Andy onto the bike and set off up the hill. The road was flanked by old stone walls, built to keep the forest at bay. However, it had lost the fight years ago, undermined by thick tree roots, crumbling into the roadside. A path cut through the debris in the road where the lorry had recently driven, however, at a junction, the lorry’s tracks lead south east, whereas their path took them north uphill. Clara wove between the debris on the road. With all the weight on the bike pressing the suspension flat, she could feel every rock and branch bump against her spine.
The road turned a corner and flattened out. A building rose out of the overgrown forest, four stories tall with large glass windows. A rusted mental fence ended in a gate covered in vines, half blocking the road. The other half of the gate had been flattened and lay beneath a layer of moss. There were no obvious tracks in the road. No recent visitors. Clara leant their bike against the gate and dismounted Andy. She sat him upright against the fence. He murmured to himself, head lolling in his chest.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Drink.”
Clara pressed a bottle of water to his mouth, tilting it slowly so that the liquid spilled behind his lip.
He spat weakly, turning his head away. “Booze.”
“Yeah right.” She placed a bottle of water in his lap and checked the chamber of her submachine gun. The forest around them was mostly pine, sparse enough that she could see a good distance through it, but with a dense enough canopy to block out sunlight. Waist-high bracken carpeted the forest floor, broken by the occasional bramble or holly bush. Her grandma had taken her on country walks when she was young and told her the names off all the plants. Clara could even remember how to identify a few edibles, but it wasn’t the season for it now.
From where she stood, the countryside was obscured from view by the forest. The roof of the nearby building would make a perfect vantage point and resting place, assuming no one was squatting inside. Clara had seen people make homes of less desirable places in the wasteland, often vagabonds who had been rejected by the remnants of society, or criminals on the run. Not the sort you wanted to bump into unannounced.
Strapping the grenade bandolier around her chest, Clara stepped through the metal gate with submachine gun in hand onto the mossy paving stone path. Cattail reeds obscured several ponds on either side of the path. Their winter-brown stalks bent beneath the weight of their fluffy heads, jacketed by pale green leaves. Each pond looked like a shrapnel explosion caught in stasis.
Stone steps lead to the building’s entrance. A heavy wooden door stood open on its hinges. Clara kept her gun at the ready as poked inside. Sunlight cut through two large windows to illuminate the lobby and a dusty grey carpet was strewn with brown leaves. A desk stood at the back of the room. Large black letters were fixed to the desk, reading ‘Amphel Wildlife Centre’. Long rectangular lights hung on their fixings from the peeling roof, one dangled length-ways into the centre of the room, rocking slowly in a draft.
Clara entered slowly, ears sharp. She kicked something which pinged off broken glass. A bullet casing. There were dozens on the floor. A rush of adrenaline rose from her feet, filling her legs with an impulse to react, but she refused to make any sudden movements. There was a stairwell at the back of the lobby and two doors leading away. She chose the closest passage. Windows ran the length of the corridor beyond, with several doorways on the opposite wall. Clara peeked through each. They were laid out like classrooms, with rows of desks facing a whiteboard. Smashed glass was everywhere, littering tables and draws. She inspected the remnants of a large glass vase, green with algae and moss. An old book depicted a frog on its cover. Curious, Clara picked it. It was open on a page which depicted a newt’s anatomy. She leafed through the pages; it seemed to be a compendium on amphibian biology. Then something caught her eye. A glass vase atop a high shelf remained intact. Something was suspended inside–a frog’s corpse, preserved by chemicals, its limbs spread out wide, pale belly exposed.
Clara left the classroom and followed the corridor around the building, peering through the exterior windows upon a valley below, obscured by treetops. However, the valley should be visible from the top floor. Turning back towards the lobby, Clara peeked inside each of the two remaining doorways. One led to a symmetrical corridor on the opposite side, whereas another opened into a large room beyond. A quick glance revealed that there was nothing inside, no happy campers or lurking threats.
Returning to Andy, she shook him awake. “Come on, you’ve got to get up. We’re heading to that rooftop. I can’t carry you up there.” Clara left him by the gate once more as she wheeled their motorbike and gear over the flattened fence and up the path into the building’s lobby, out of sight from the road.
“Come on.” She lifted him to his feet. He had the strength to hold his own weight if she steered him. Together, they walked inside the building and towards the stairs. She hadn’t noticed before, but more steps led downwards to a basement–a place unchecked. A cold breeze sifted through the crack, tickling Clara’s skin. She shuddered, setting Andy down in the shade at the top of the stairs, and readied her submachine gun. Better not leave a stone unturned if they were going to spend the night.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Venturing down the steps, a stench hit her, dense and putrid. Tying a bandana over her mouth, Clara turned on her flashlight and opened the door. Inside was a large damp room with a low ceiling. Nine cylindrical objects, like jacuzzis, were spaced in the room.
“Hello,” Clara said. Her voice echoed off the tiled walls, but there was no response. She approached one of the open-topped jacuzzis. Inside was a black sludge. Objects floated on the surface, reflected in the gleam of Clara’s headlamp. Her eyes stung from the stench. The words: ‘Breeding Pool One’ were inscribed on the side. There was nothing here but a long abandoned science experiment.
Returning to Andy, she hauled him up, shifting his weight in her arms, and carried him up the stairs. Once they reached the top floor, Clara set Andy by the stairwell and inspected the rooms to make sure they were alone. Once done, she retrieved a ration bar and binoculars from her rucksack and purveyed the landscape.
A large river snaked towards the horizon. Clara followed it with her binoculars. A farmhouse sat in fields overgrown with weeds beside the riverbank. A derelict yellow tractor grazed in the fields beside a couple of cows. In the distance, a bridge crossed the river into a town. Clara focussed her sights on a road leading into the town, looking for signs of life, planting her elbows on the windowsill to steady her hands. The lorry which had passed them earlier that day had been heading downriver towards that town. Perhaps that had been their destination. She searched the sky for smoke stacks, but they were difficult to find when the town itself was obscured by a bend in the valley.
If raining-frogs was all this apocalypse zone had to offer, and this zone of apocalypse had spread downriver during the cataclysm, there was a high chance whatever village had been there before had survived. However, surviving the cataclysm was one thing, reforming society when the power grid and global economy had collapsed was another. Many towns and cities had succumbed to starvation, disease, and dissent over the years, not to mention neighbouring apocalypse zones expanding their territory, such as wandering zombie hordes or mutant warbands.
Clara remembered folklore among mercenaries about a region somewhere in the world where, during the cataclysm, the number seven had disappeared from existence. It just wasn’t calculable anymore. People’s electronics failed, wireless signals couldn’t be transmitted in the region. When someone tried to count a group of seven things, like the days of the week or colours in a rainbow, their minds warped and failed to comprehend it. Those things simply disappeared from reality. They weren’t invaded by ghouls or haunted by demons, or decimated by plague and famine. All they lost was the number seven–it now went six, eight and so on, and yet their society completely collapsed. The specifics varied between which merc was telling the tale, and Clara didn’t exactly believe the story, but the lesson remained the same: It wasn’t the apocalypse zone that determined your chances of survival, but how you adapted to it.
Overhead, grey clouds flattened the sky. It would rain again that afternoon, maybe frogs. Clara circled the windows on the top floor, looking in every direction, creating a visual map of the landmarks inside her mind. It was a lot harder than simply annotating her wrist terminal. She had gone years without relying on the device as a kid, it would do her well to shake off the metal cobwebs and practise her old pathfinding skills.
Clara decided, if they were going to rest here until morning, they might as well get comfortable. Returning to their motorbike downstairs, she unfastened the large rucksack from the back and carried it upstairs, laying a blanket over Andy where he lay on the floor. His breathing was stronger now, and his temperature had gone, but he was sweating profusely. Clara pestered him with a water bottle until he drank the whole thing, then dragged a chair up to the window and watched the valley below. Wrapped in a blanket, she sat there until the sun set, drifting off to sleep...
Clara was standing outside in the pitch black night, exposed. Somewhere under the earth, a dark force dwelled in shadow. It seeped through the cracks in the road outside. Clara jumped up, dancing around the cracks like they were giant chasms. It was a game she’d played as a kid, but now it was real. Fleeing inside a nearby building, she slammed the door shut, but the dark energy slipped under the gap and groped her ankles. Clara ran, but the darkness enveloped her, steering her towards a staircase. The stairs leading upwards had collapsed. Only those which led downwards were accessible.
The basement door creaked open. A cold air invited her inside.
Clara woke, seizing her submachine gun. She jumped out of her seat and scanned the room. Waning moonlight shone faintly on the corridor from behind an overcast sky. Clara flicked on her headlamp and observed the doorways. Nothing had changed since she had slept. Andy still rested beneath a blanket on the floor. To ease her paranoia, she paced down the corridor, checking each room in turn. An image of the basement flashed in her mind.
“Did you see that?” she asked her AI.
Please clarify.
“My dream.”
I do not have access to your dream state. Please clarify.
“The basement, downstairs.”
No threats detected.
Sitting back down, Clara tried to relax, but the echoes of the dream haunted her. Each time she drifted off, she envisioned the door to the basement, slightly ajar. It was no use. Either she stayed awake all night, afraid of the dark, or faced her fears and went downstairs to inspect it.
Clara fixed a spare torch to the stock of her submachine gun, adjusted the strap on Andy’s grenade bandolier and set off. Each step she took broke the abject silence. She could hear her heart beating steadily, solidly. She rounded the bottom steps into the lobby and turned towards the basement.
With her right hand still on the trigger, the gun’s stock pressed against her shoulder, Clara pulled the door open. It was just as she remembered it, dark and smelly. Clara adjusted the beam on her flashlight to be precise, and the one on her headlamp to be broad. Between the two, she had good visibility. Eight brick cylinders as large as jacuzzis were laid out in a square. She checked each one, strolling around the room, breathing through her mouth against the stench.
What was she doing? She should be resting. She’d let paranoia win, and now she was skulking around cesspits in a basement in the middle of the night searching for a nightmare. Sighing, Clara turned her back on the room and strolled towards the exit. Her headlamp flickered. She tapped it, and it shone steady, but then her gun’s flashlight flickered. What was wrong with them both? Electrical interference?
Something splashed in the furthest pool. Clara spun on it. Her torchlight cast a strobe on the pool, flicking shadows up the walls. Clara smacked the light. Her heart pounded. Something rose out of the pool. A dark, meaty torso, dangling a thick limb over the side of the pool.
The door behind her slammed shut. With a flash, her flashlight burst. Clara sprinted towards the exit, but her headlamp was so dim she could barely see her hand in front of her face. She crashed into a wall, disoriented, feeling for the door. Behind her, liquid sloshed as the nightmare climbed out of the pool, thudding wet on the tiled floor.
Clara unpinned a frag grenade and threw it behind her, then fired blindly towards the figure. Each muzzle flash revealed a glimpse of the monster. It was like nothing she’d seen before, swelling and collapsing like a floating jellyfish. Clara counted to four, then crouched and covered her face. The grenade exploded. Shrapnel pattered against her combat jacket like stabbing nails. Her ears rang as she twisted her headlamp’s lens, but it wouldn’t brighten, then she remembered her Augmentation abilities: last night, she had willed a surge of electrical energy into the UV sticks.
Squeezing the headlamp, she felt her fingers tingle. A shock ran up her arm, and the headlamp burst to life. Clara shone it on the exit and dashed through the door without looking back, slamming it shut behind her. Running up the stairs, she quickly checked the lobby for intruders, then spun back around on the basement, submachine gun pointed at the exit.
All was quiet. Clara readied another grenade for once the monster revealed itself. In the tight space, the explosion would be ruthless. Counting the seconds, Clara remained frozen for what felt like an hour, until finally, anxiety replaced adrenaline, and she lowered her gun. Why hadn’t the monster pursued her? And what was it? Could it have been just another nightmare? The skirmish had happened so fast, it was almost like she’d imagined it. She tried to recall what the monster had looked like, to cement the image in her mind, but it evaded her. It must have been an amphibian, maybe a queen frog, if they had such a thing.
But that didn’t explain her torchlights misbehaving. It must have been her Augmentation interfering with the electronics. Perhaps it was responsible for draining the battery on her wrist terminal? Those were details she needed to understand. The quicker she calibrated at an Augmentation Master Console, the better. Clara climbed back up the stairs to the top floor, jamming a chair beneath the door handle so that nothing could open it from the other side, and sat back down beside Andy.
Now she knew what was in the basement now. Did it help her sleep? Not a wink.
As she replayed the events in her mind, one question stuck out to her. If the monster in the pool was an amphibian just like frogs and toads that had fallen from the sky, then what had closed the door behind her? What had tried to trap her inside?