The crunch underfoot of gravel and dead overgrowth was inescapable, but preferable to leaving prints in the dirt for anyone to find.

What was once a highway lay in ruin, rusted out cars from a bygone era piled up at the shoulders. Occasional trees jutted out of the fragmented asphalt, but now they were just as dead as the forests framing either side. The only life vivifying a lonely stretch of forgotten highway in the middle of the dead winter was a single figure clad in black from his boots to his trench coat to his featureless, obsidian mask.

Like his namesake, the Revenant followed the highway slowly and deliberately in the east by north easterly direction it drew him. For days he walked, only resting when he came upon a hoard of roaming dead, decomposed down to the components even bacteria won’t touch. He stood motionless in the center of the highway for the seven hours it took the hoard to move on. If one passed near enough and its eyes hadn’t rotted all the way out, it might stop and look at the Revenant, and he would look back, and then the shuffling of its fellows would pull its attention.

Then he kept walking.

He stopped at a turn in the highway, at a patch of dirt by the edge of the asphalt. A footprint. Not a boot or any other shoe suited for the terrain. Average weight, worn, but not so ragged, continuing in the east by north easterly direction. Nearby was another footprint. Barefoot, female, with all of its flesh intact. Both were weathered about the same and going the same direction. It was impossible to say who followed who or if one even followed the other.

The revenant erased the prints before following their vector.

“I’ve never heard of ‘Concord,’” Tori said in an attempt at idle conversation.

“It was around before the outbreak,” Holt replied. “When things stopped dying properly, people migrated into cities.”

“They didn’t last long,” Ike added. “This was before megacities, before anyone knew what could happen to a corpse after a few weeks. Didn’t take much for the place to be overrun.”

“Why are we going there?” Tori asked.

“Because a gang of thieves and murderers cleared the place out and reverted to tribalism,” Holt grumbled discontentedly.

“Now that’s not really fair, mate,” Ike replied. “They don’t like living in your big, clean cities. They’re still people like me and you.”

“No one sane chooses to live in squalor. The Rust Devils are a filthy, uneducated, disease ridden hoard of criminals and psychopaths who’d rather steal OUR supplies and fuck in the dirt than live a decent life.”

“And soon they’ll have their fingers and scalpels all up in your legs.”

Tori looked worriedly between them. “Why are you taking us there?”

“I’m just joshing. Concord’s a slice of heaven.”

“They’ll steal your organs if you’re not careful,” said Holt.

“Is it really their fault if you’re not careful?” Ike adjusted the rearview on a cloud of dust on their tail. “If you have anything else to say, get it out of your system, ‘cuz you won’t want to say it to their faces.”

Three motorcycles pulled up along either side and behind the jeep with machetes and spear guns in hand. The one trailing closely behind had a passenger with harpoons at the ready. Holt and Tori had their hands on their guns, but Ike leisurely grinned and banged on the Phoenix Brigade emblem on his door, then held up three fingers. The biker pulled in close to count the passengers and when Tori saw the helmet spiked with nails and wrapped in a scarf, the red-brown mud of the region caking everything except the black bug eyed goggles, she understood why they were called Rust Devils.

The rider signaled his friends who whooped and hollered as they pulled away toward their patrol, then he accelerated ahead of them, dusting Ike’s windshield a few times before leading them toward a spot on the horizon. As they drew near, Tori began to appreciate the rust in the name in a more literal sense.

The town was in the middle of an open field that was once a sprawl of urban and suburban infrastructure but was now stripped down to the dirt until only an industrial nightmare of patchwork aluminum and iron stood at the center of the barren clearing like an anthill. Two smokestacks belched a continuous cloud of inky pollution into the sky with terrifying implications for the citizens scurrying along exposed catwalks coiling like veins around and between the scaffolding built up around the buildings. The uninvitingly spiked wall surrounding the place seemed the sturdiest construct, still standing strong despite visible ballistic and biological abuse. The occasional oil well dotted the otherwise barren field between the jeep and the ramshackle monstrosity.

Ike stopped a good distance before reaching the gate, notably just outside the effective range of a hunting rifle. “Alright, any closer and they’ll strip my jeep. It’s been a riot. Hope you find your case.”

Tori and Holt unloaded, wary of the biker prowling behind them, and reluctantly trudged toward the gate. Before they left, Ike gave them one more bit of advice.

“When you get there, ask for Andrew Thompson. If he’s still alive, he’ll make sure no one kills and eats ya. Oh, and you might want to keep that you’re ICC to yourselves.”

“No shit,” Holt answered.

Laughing, because this was a joke to him, Ike sped off into the wild dead yonder, leaving the two agents to confront the toothy mandibles in the wall gaping open for them. Immediately inside, walls funneled toward another gate, a portcullis of solid steel peppered with bullet dents. The ground of this little courtyard was packed down hard with tire tracks and the walls were teeming with Rust Devils armed with various sharp and flaming equipment. Only a couple had proper guns, but it hardly mattered, especially with the mandible gates locking them in.

“That’s far enough,” a voice called when they reached the center of the square. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Holt grumbled under his breath before replying. “We came with Ike, the monster hunter. Our transport ran afoul of something he was hunting, this was the nearest we could find a doctor and some wheels.”

“You with the Phoenix Brigade?”

“Something like that.”

The Rust Devils behind the gate deliberated. “What are you carrying?”

Holt nudged Tori and they held up their weapons. “Nine millimeters. Not up for trade.”

“What about the bullets?”

“They don’t work too well without them.”

“Ike said to ask for Andrew Thompson,” Tori impatiently called.

There was another moment of deliberation. One of them shrugged and they descended the rampart. An engine flared up and the inner gate lifted with a pained groan of old metal.

“Welcome to Concord,” Holt sighed as if disappointed.

Their welcome met with less fanfare than their arrival. Now that it was clear they weren’t here to fight or trade, the droves dispersed into the wreckage. A few of the better armed devils stayed to intimidate and prod their visitors. They were either armored up with car parts and spikes or dressed down to little more than dirt and scars. Several of them were missing fingers and a few operated on primitive prosthetic limbs, almost none had a full set of teeth. Tori did not like the multitude of eyes weighing them like slabs of meat. Especially her. She never considered herself in terms of sex appeal, but the women she saw did wonders for her self-esteem and that did not bode well for her effect on the men.

A massive man with an empty eye socket and a blowtorch dangling from his belt blocked Holt’s path, hands audibly flexing at his side. “Das a nice piece you carry.”

Holt put his hands on his side so he felt his gun through his coat. “It does its job.”

“I been look’n for a piece like dat. They expensive, but I think I get one for free.”

“Let me know if you find a place.” He attempted to walk around the giant of a man but was grabbed by the lapel. Holt grabbed his wrist before he could take the gun, then pulled his arm so his head was low enough to drive his forehead into the big guy’s nose.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Tori reached for her gun but Holt stopped her. Surprisingly, the other Rust Devils weren’t very perturbed by this act of violence against one of their own.

Holt snapped his fingers to get the attention of the big guy with a hand to his face. “You know where we can find a doctor? You know, surgeon? Physician? Medic?”

A wet crunch and the big guy’s nose was back in place. He was scowling, but merely brushed them off and left.

“Not the friendliest bunch,” Tori remarked.

“That’s practically how they say hello.”

A small crowd stayed with them while they went deeper into Concord. Most of them were just curious to see anyone so clean, a few were definitely looking for a fight, and there were some catcalling at Tori.

There was a skinny junk rat who jumped to his feet when he saw the two and scurried up beside them. “Hello, hello, hello. Where are you two from?”

“Don’t encourage him,” Holt advised. “Give him a good tap if you have to.”

“Don’t pop me for being curious!” the vagabond bleated. “Not every day we see someone not covered in shit. You got guns, arrived on the wings of a phoenix, and don’t take flak from the peasantry, you must be kings!” He leaned in and sniffed Tori who immediately turned around and put a finger to his chest.

“Fuck off,” she warned.

The junk rat had his hands up like her finger was a gun and stayed like that for a few seconds after she went on her way. His expression was wry and suspicious. Stealthily he crept up behind the agents. Tori was trying so hard to ignore him, she was caught off guard when he suddenly lifted her shirt. His jaw was broken before he could lift it past her navel, or as the junk rat so frightfully proclaimed, her lack of one.

Guns went up, blades went unsheathed, and anyone unarmed scrambled for cover at the cry of “infiltrator” spreading through the city. Holt and Tori were surrounded in seconds, unable to do much more than hold their hands over their heads and wait for the first shot. No one was willing to get close enough to lay a hand on them.

The riot eventually died down to just a handful of spiked up Rust Devils shouting threats and demanding explanations. Between the slurs and Holt’s less than friendly replies, Tori called all the attention onto herself.

They were apprehensive, so she bit her hand, then displayed the blood she drew. “See. I’m bleeding. Infiltrators don’t bleed.”

There was a quiet shuffle when a junk rat different from the first one reluctantly entered the circle and pulled Tori’s arm down. He sniffed the wound and dabbed the blood with his fingers. A quick taste and spit and he gave the other devils a nod.

“Why the hell don’t you have a belly button?” one of them demanded.

“Look at me. I’m not reaching for a weapon, just watch.” Slowly, she pulled down the collar of her shirt to her collarbone, displaying a barcode tattoo appended by a delta symbol. The edge of the circle cowered back as she turned to face them, but the tension seemed to lessen some when they saw the tattoo.

“See,” Holt affirmed. “She came from a test tube, still just as human as you and me.”

Confused murmurs traveled across the crowd, a few lowered their weapons, but many were still suspicious.

“I never heard of no delta series!” one of the more heavily equipped devils shouted.

“I don’t remember telling anyone,” Tori aggressively replied.

Weapons were still pointed at her, but with a little more reluctance. A few of the more cautious in the crowd advised against picking a fight with her. Eventually, the mob dispersed and everything went back to normal. Someone even wolf whistled and cried “Damn boy, she’s a brick house!”

“Maybe we should have introduced ourselves like that,” Holt suggested.

“I swear, I’ll kill the next person that howls at me.”

“How do you know Andrew?” someone behind them suddenly asked. The agents took their hands off their guns when they saw who called. He wasn’t the most physically intimidating, spindly and nervous, out of breath as if he ran here. A real pipsqueak compared to the devil Holt just dealt with. He repeated his question when uncertainty held their tongues.

“Through Ike,” Tori answered. “Said to ask for him.”

“Are you Andrew?” Holt asked.

“I’m his brother.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh. You have our condolences,” Tori replied, troubling with sounding sincere.

“Well, we’re all dead. Just waiting to lose our minds,” Andrew’s brother apathetically replied. “So, what are you here for?”

The brother had them in Concord’s hospital within five minutes. Tori expected a tent or slum, but was surprised that the devils refurbished Concord’s old hospital nearly to acceptable standards. It wasn’t as pristine or sterile as an ICC hospital, but completely baffling next to the rest of the settlement.

“You’re a doctor, right?” Holt suspiciously asked the gruff looking man in a lab coat surveying his x rays.

“Oh ya,” he absentmindedly replied. “I cut people open and stitch them up all the time. Not used to folks showing up unless they lost something like blood or an arm. Lots of folks come in needing a new liver or lung, but can’t do nothing ‘bout that since organs don’t keep anymore. Not unless they’re frozen, but we don’t have the machine to defrost ‘em.”

“I changed my mind. I’m waiting until we get back.”

“You’re already in the gown, Holt,” Tori warmed, holding him down in the bed.

“Bad idea to wait, friend,” the doctor added. “You got enough ossifier in you to build a new skeleton. Any longer and you won’t be able to take them apart again. You’ll be stuck with bones that look like cobblestone.”

Holt swore under his breath.

“How long will it take?” Tori asked.

“Couple of hours, maybe more,” said the doctor. “I’ve never had to take anyone apart before, but putting him back together will be easy as a jigsaw puzzle.” He called the nurse, or whatever they called the assistant there, to prepare the patient for surgery, though he used less professional lingo.

“You’re not putting me under for this, are you?” Holt frantically asked. “You’re going to use local anesthetics.”

“If I was cutting them off, maybe. The work’s too delicate to let you stay awake through it. People’s heart’s tend to beat faster when they can see their bone. Lucky for you, we got more drugs than we know what to do with. Don’t worry, we won’t let you wake up in the middle of it.”

“I trust the drugs! They’re stolen, it’s the hands I’m worried about!”

“They have to break your legs like glowsticks,” Tori reminded him. “You don’t want to be awake through that again.”

Holt grabbed Tori’s collar and pulled her close. “Tori, listen. You watch those surgeons like a hawk. You see them touch anything they shouldn’t, you shoot one and do the rest yourself! Got that?!”

“Sure, sure,” Tori sardonically replied.

As he was rolled into the operating room, Holt declared, “I swear to God, I’m weighing myself when this is over and if I’m an ounce lighter I am shooting the next person I see in a lab coat!”

The raving quieted over the next few minutes as the anesthetics went to work. Despite his rough mannerisms and dirty frock, the Rust Devil doctor was meticulous in his work. It was a proficiency built on practice as opposed to education. He was probably one of the boys scurrying around the operating room with scalpels and dishes in his youth.

“What’s the deal between you?” Andrew’s brother asked, joining Tori in the observation room.

“We work together.”

“He’s not your dad?”

“I don’t have a dad.”

“Oh. I guess you wouldn’t. Heard you were a delta. Didn’t think they got that far.”

“They didn’t. Not the same ones, anyways.”

“Yeah. We still tell stories about the alphas and the betas. It’s been so long, though, they’re almost like fairy tales. So, that mean you’re really strong? And fast? And indestructible and stuff like that?”

“And stuff like that.”

“Do you feel emotions? I heard you super soldiers didn’t feel any emotions.”

“Only the important ones.”

“Thought you were supposed to be taller.”

“It’s easier on my back,” she dully replied as she went for the door.

“I thought you were supposed to make sure no one stole your friend’s organs?”

“He could stand to lose a few pounds.”

As riveting as the conversation was, Tori had more important things to do. Things that took her to the garage.

It was a travesty. Parts of Concord looked as if they would fall to pieces without proper lubrication, but their vehicles, equally ramshackle, were the genius of a madman. Pickups with bladed cattle guards, buggies with pneumatic legs, even a dump truck with a raised center of gravity and a roll cage built around it. Everything with tires had chains, and anything that wasn’t armored and spiked up was stripped down to wheels and an engine for maximum speed. Several vehicles were simply motorized platforms for mounted guns, harpoon launchers, barrel catapults, and dozens of other improvised siege weapons that could have gone into Concord’s defense, but instead decorate this rusted fleet.

The worst part: an army of mechanics and junk rats that could be maintaining or improving Concord’s infrastructure were performing idle maintenance on these chrome monstrosities.

That isn’t to say there weren’t common vehicles. Tori found a scattered assortment of trucks and buggies with the bare essential parts and promptly began inspecting the nearest.

A junk rat busy disassembling a catwalk for parts pointed her out to someone on the ground.

“Can I help you, missy?” a heavy set mechanic asked.

Tori didn’t stop checking the truck. She didn’t even look up. “I need a car.”

“We don’t have any cars. We have bikes, we have buggies, we have trucks, and we have war machines.”

“I need something that can take me and my partner to the nearest city.”

“Any one of these can make the trip and back, but they don’t leave the garage without their driver. And drivers don’t leave without a reason.”

“What about a trade?”

“Those guns and bullets would make you the proud owner of our finest buggy,” he said, referring to her and Holt’s guns strapped under her coat.

“I only need a ride, and I’m keeping the guns.”

“Then you’re out of luck. Scrappers don’t go that way no more, area’s picked clean and raiding parties are busy harassing the hedron in the opposite direction.”

“Then it should be safe.”

“Our raiding parties. You want a ride, you better come up with a damn good reason a driver should go out of their way.”

“Do you need gas?”

“We got no shortage of that,” the mechanic dismissively replied and began walking away.

“What about nitrous?” Noticing the word piquing his interest, Tori dug in. “Send us up in a truck and we’ll make sure it comes back loaded up with nitrous.”

The mechanic stopped looked inquisitively at Tori. “How much?”

“How big is the truck?”

He counted on his fingers as if weighing which truck would bring back the most booty, then abruptly dropped the idea. “Just one problem, missy. The nearest city is an ICC city. They won’t let us get close, much less let you in.”

“We can take care of it,” Tori cautiously replied.

“What makes you think the ICC will listen to you?” the mechanic asked suggestively.

Tori coiled her fingers around the handle she was gripping. “I can negotiate.”

“They aren’t known to negotiate,” he pressed. “In fact, the only people I’ve ever seen them talk to is one of their own.”

The mechanic was resting his hand on the largest wrench hanging from his belt, tapping his fingers readily. Tori severely doubted it would do him any good, but she would prefer not to fight her way out of this garage. Other mechanics and junk rats were picking up on his implications, if Tori didn’t think of something quick, that would be the only option.

Before she could lay down an excuse, the metal in the garage began to clatter until the whole thing was rumbling. There was a roar of a massive engine in the distance.

The mechanic swore and went to battle stations.