James Axler – Zero City

“Now that’s odd,” Ryan murmured. “Don’t recall ever finding a redoubt with an exterior tunnel.”

“Looks handmade,” Krysty said, squinting.

“Let me check this,” J.B. suggested, removing the rad counter from his shirt collar and pointing it toward the opening. Everybody remembered when they had nearly gotten fried alive trying to exit a redoubt that was at the bottom of radioactive blast crater.

“Got no readings,” J.B. said, lowering the silent device.

“Check them,” Mildred told him, digging a tiny wristwatch from her backpack. The mechanism was long broken, but that wasn’t why she still kept the time piece. The physician held it out, and both J.B. and Ryan waved their rad counters over the timepiece. Each counter gave off a click when over the tiny radium-lined hands of the watch.

“Okay, let’s go,” Ryan said, attaching his rad counter to the collar again. “Standard positions, single-yard spread.”

As they walked into the tunnel, the huge door rumbled shut behind them, loudly bolting closed with a series of dull mechanical thuds. Lighting a few candles, the companions proceeded along the rocky tunnel. The passageway was clearly artificial, the rough walls supported by concrete columns set at regular intervals. The tunnel curved gently to the left, and suddenly their way was blocked by something huge and leathery, the object barely visible in the flickering candlelight.

“What is that?” Dean asked curiously. “A pile of luggage?”

Instantly, the obstruction turned and snarled loudly, inhuman eyes dominating a misshapen face.

“Mutie!” Ryan yelled, drawing his blaster and firing.

J.B. brought up the Uzi, the muzzle-blasts strobing the passageway in flashes and giving them a brief glimpse of wings and a fang-filled mouth on the end of a serpentine neck.

Screaming and spitting in rage, the beast jerked at the impact of the 9 mm rounds, then advanced toward the humans, seemingly unaffected from the lead and steel coming its way.

Now they all discharged their blasters, the noise almost deafening in the tight confines of the shaft. Then a thunderous boom overwhelmed the irregular barrage as Doc unleashed the LeMat, a foot-long lance of flame extending from the muzzle.

Oddly, the beast wailed in pain, covering its gnarled features with both wings. Then turning tail, it rushed away from the companions and disappeared.

Staying in combat formation, Ryan and the others moved forward slowly until reaching the end of the tunnel. A soft breeze threatened their candles, and the companions cupped hands around the tiny flames. The underground passage fronted at the crest of a low hillock, the ground gently sloping away into the night. Overhead, a full moon was struggling to send grayish light through a heavily clouded sky. Not a star was visible, but they did spot a tinged figure flapping for the horizon as if running for its life.

As they walked farther out, the friends watched where they stepped. In the cracks of the stone flooring, a single small flower was growing, the delicate white petals spread wide to challenge the world.

“Some sort of bat, I think,” J.B. commented, tracking the passage of the beast with his Uzi just in case it returned. “Ugly bastard.”

Ryan scanned the ground. “Don’t see any blood. Our blasters did as much damage as pissing would.”

“Did you see those eyes?” Mildred asked, her ZKR pistol still in her hand. “Solid black with no pupils. Definitely nocturnal.”

“Night feeder,” Jak said, then he sniffed loudly. “Not smell spoor. Not home.”

“Just waiting for prey, like a vulture sitting in a tree,” Ryan said, resting the stock of the Steyr on his hip. “This is a good vantage spot. Probably can see for miles in the daylight.” He paused. “Look over there.”

The windswept dunes of the desert below formed gentle ripples in a flat sandy sea that reached out to the horizon. There stood the ruins of a predark city, a ragged array of skyscrapers reaching into the clouds proud and majestic. Very few predark cities had escaped the bombs, or the firestorms that followed.

“Where are we?” Doc asked, staring. The ruins didn’t resemble any metropolis he knew from the past.

J.B. shrugged. “Sky is too cloudy to get a reading with the minisextant. Could be anywhere.”