Harris

We stick together...

—

Nicollet Mall

—

Harris heard it before she did.

A clatter and crash that echoed across the windswept rubble of Nicollet Avenue. He crouched in the shadow of a burnt-out tank and nocked an arrow. Boone did the same, crouching, no thought, just long-ingrained reflex. She shifted the black duffel bag slung across her back. It hung heavily on her shoulders, stuffed to bulging, the contents packed awkwardly, and so, so important.

Shit. Come on, Boone thought. We’re almost home.

But Harris waited, so she waited too.

*

The Ssys’sekian armada may have been gone for months now, the skies over Minneapolis—maybe even over the whole world—were empty of the great dark discs of their mother ships, empty of the constant rise and fall of their blocky cargo shuttles going from ground to ship, and ship to ground, over and over, but still…

The hard-learned lessons remained.

You hide. You listen. You wait.

There were years of memories crowded in her head with Harris’ gravelly voice. Growing up during the invasion, hiding in the ruins as the Ssys’sek Marauders marched, their heavy boots echoing in sync, or as the Tick-tock Hunters searched the ruins, ticking and clanking, or as gleaming silver arrowhead attack ships swooped down low, sowing the earth with thundering fire, his voice was always there.

You run when it’s quiet.

In her head, she could see the familiar lines of his old, scarred face, with his crooked nose and shock of white hair; his clothing hanging on his long, alley cat thin frame, ragged and dirty and too often patched. Fighting didn’t do shit, kid. They won. We lost. That’s all over. We’re just rats in the walls of their house now, grabbing scraps and running for cover.

In her memories, she could always see him cautiously peering out from their hiding spots as the booms faded and the shaking ground steadied, a haze of dust slowly settling. You hide and you wait, then you wait some more, then you run. That’s how you survive. This is what he’d say as Ssys’sek bombs fell like rain, the whole world shivering and crumbling, the air burning, over and over, again and again.

That’s all we can do now.

Hard-learned lessons.

*

So they waited.

Their breath fogged. The air was damp and cold. The gray of Fall was quickly sliding into the ashy-snowed Winter to come. The wind howled through the broken and jagged buildings that towered over them, creaking and swaying. A storm of papers burst loose in the gale from one of the upper stories and tumbled down into the street below like confetti.

The noise came again. Closer.

A clitter-clatter crashing and banging.

It was coming from across the street, from within the half-collapsed ruins of Macy’s. Inside, hazy shafts of daylight pierced the shadowy gloom and Boone could see piles of old wreckage of collapsed ceilings, cast aside junk, and dripping water.

Something dashed through the light and shadow, a quick flash of shadows.

Be nothing, please. We’re so close. Her eyes drifted up, up, up the silhouette of the IDS building looming high, high overhead. I just want to get home…

The rush of noise again, stumbles and thuds.

A deer burst from one of Macy’s old display windows—a stag.

Tattered rags hung from its antlers like clothes on the line. Its white chest heaved with hard breaths. Its black nostrils flared as it snorted fogged breaths. Its hooves click-clacked on the concrete. It was slat-ribbed and scarred, but still tall and regal in the Fall chill, an old-world refugee scenting the wind.

Boone gasped. Dinner! Every other thought washed away by a flood of drooling hunger. She wanted to get home; she needed to get home, and the weight of the duffel bag across her back reminded her that she had to get home, but this? This sudden stroke of luck? This was more than she could’ve ever dared hope for. Fresh meat... She wanted to whoop and clap. She squeaked, the excitement leaking from her.

The stag spotted them across the intersection and froze.

“Steady,” Harris said as he stood, smooth and easy, careful not to spook the beast. She watched him raise his bow, his eyes slit in concentration. Hunger twisted in her guts, warring with a desperate need, with a vicious want, but she wasn’t worried. He would make the shot, she told herself. He always makes the shot.

But the old man grunted as he drew his bow. She saw it shake slightly at the end of his arm. She wanted to ignore it. He’s fine. She thought. He’s fine. She wanted to brush it away, but it nagged at her, tiny and insistent, and all the little things she had been noticing lately saw their chance and piled on too, nagging at her. His wet hacking coughs in the morning, how he was getting slower, falling asleep faster at night, how he groaned and stretched, his sour moods and his aching grimaces, his quiet winces, and his ginger movements when he thought she wasn’t looking...

He’s not a young man anymore.

*

She always wanted him to stay home now, but he wouldn’t hear it. I’ve taken care of you too long to stop now, was always his reply.

Before the invasion, Harris had worked in a library.

He’d often lean back at night and reminisce. I loved that job, the long, tall stacks, the quiet amongst all those books, all the different people, his smile faraway.

Once, a few years ago, he had shown her the heap of glittering glass and twisted steel on the other side of downtown that had once been his library. He had tried not to cry as he knelt in the ruins, absently picking at the muck and the rubble. He tried not to cry because it always made her cry whenever he did, so he held it in. But as little as she had been then, she could still see that he was struggling with it, so she had cried anyway.

I had a family, he had said, the only time he ever mentioned them to her, his voice edged in tears. He had looked at her then, and even as young as she was, she could almost see it in his eyes, that terrible day years ago, the day of the invasion, the day the Ssys’sek had come, their great discs filling the skies, wreathed in flame as they burned down through the atmosphere. I wasn’t there that day, and I lost them.

He had clutched her then, an iron grip circling her slim bicep, squeezing tight, his eyes locked on her, insistent. That’s why we stick together now, you understand? She had nodded and then he had hugged her, and after that they left the dead library behind, and never went back, because the old world was dead now, there was no past anymore, just rubble and ruin and the unknown future.

That had been years ago, and he hadn’t been a young man then either.

*

“You ready, kid?” He whispered through clenched teeth.

She slipped out of the big duffel. It clinked on the concrete and slowly sagged over. She patted its side. Don’t go anywhere.

The stag stood across Nicollet Avenue, on the other side an old military defensive line the Ssys’sek had blasted to splinters, old tanks and weapons melted into wavy lumps of metal long ago. It pranced. Its white tail flashed and its ears twitched.

“I’m ready,” Boone whispered.

She eased her knife from its sheath. The tape that wrapped the handle was frayed and sweat-darkened, but the blade gleamed in her dirty fist. She crouched, her old duct-taped sneakers creaking. She wanted this. She needed this. She could almost smell the stag roasting on the spit, could almost hear the fat sizzle and pop in the flames. She was drooling with anticipation.

She was ready.

Oh yeah, she was ready.

Fresh meat.

The stag would run. From fear and pain and shock, from the rush of adrenaline, when the arrow hit, the stag would run. Her job was to chase it, bring it down, and slit its throat. Harris would catch up—too old to catch it himself—and then they would finish it together, fast: skin it, gut it, strip the meat, pack it all up, and get out of there. Hopefully without attracting any of the wild dog packs lurking close by, or one of the leopards that stalked the skyscraper heights.

Or worse…

Boone’s legs tensed, ready to spring forward.

A horn shattered the silence, a long blatt echoing through the ruins.

The stag burst into a sudden run. It leapt the wreckage and bounded past them.

Boone stumbled, and she and Harris exchanged a wide-eyed look.

“Hide!” Harris barked.

They scrambled in a rush back behind the fire-blackened tank and ducked in the jagged hole blown in its armor. They crawled on hands and knees through the sooty dark within, through dangling wires and scorched bones.

More horns echoed through the concrete canyons.

Boone scooted back up against Harris. He wrapped a long, wiry arm around her. His scratchy cheek brushed her. “We’re alright, we’re okay,” he whispered, again and again. “Shhh-shh-shhh, we’re just fine,” but she could feel his heart hammering in his chest, his body thrumming with nervous energy.

There were shouts and crashes coming from Macy’s, animal hoots and yips. She couldn’t see the old building from this side of the tank, but she didn’t have to. She knew what was coming. The noise burst from within the Macy’s, suddenly louder and clearer, noise tumbling out into the open air, knocking through the rubble and kicking through the trash littering the street, shouts and whoops and running feet.

“They’re hunting the stag,” Boone whispered.

“I know,” Harris shushed her.

The horn sounded again. It was long and loud and close.

There were thuds and smacks on the tank’s armor, and a storm of stomping feet overhead. Then a crowd broke over them, a howling pack; they leapt off the tank, hitting the street and running, chasing the stag.

The Broken.

*

Once, the Broken had been survivors just like her, like Harris, and like their friends. Once, they had been running and hiding, being careful. Once, they had been lucky. That luck ran out on the day the Ssys’sek Harvesters had scooped them up into the endless rise and fall of the cargo shuttles, up to the waiting Ships parked overhead, big dark discs filling the sky, just like everything else the Ssys’sek stole, all their plundered loot—the water, the oil, the metals and minerals—the pleading, screaming masses of humanity were all taken up into those waiting ships.

Most of the people taken up on those shuttles never came back. Whatever happened up there in those silently hovering ships, the people still living in the ruins had no idea, they only knew one thing for sure… They’re all gone now, taken by the Ssys’sek when they left, carried off to the stars.

All except for the Broken.

The shuttles went up, and came back down, every day, every night, a constantly moving line, up and down, up and down. Most of the time, they landed at Cargo Hubs to be loaded for a return trip to the Mother Ships.

Again and again. Over and over.

Occasionally, shuttles would peel off from the line to land in the dead cities in a blast of grit and steam. Once down, the doors would spin open, the ramp would extend, and slow groups of naked people would stagger out from the dark interior, blinking in the light. They were always bent and mangled, hesitant and hobbling, bodies cut on, roughly sewn back together, nervous systems ripped apart, brains mangled, limbs and other parts sometimes completely removed, or sometimes grafted with strange alien metals, or stuck with frayed bundles of wiring. Taken apart somehow, and sloppily reassembled.

Ssys’sekian Marauders in heavy clanking armor, their fishbowl helmets sloshing with murky yellow liquid, would follow from within the ship, jabbing with long sparking rods, screeching in their harsh cicada-chirp language, until, confused, angry, and in pain, the small crowd would scatter like frightened dogs, mutilated monsters now loosed upon the ruined world.

The return of the Broken.

Were they weapons, deliberately crafted, intended to be inflicted upon the few human survivors still living in the old cities, or were they failed experiments of some kind, nothing but mangled trash being tossed out?

There was no way to know for sure.

Whatever was the truth, they were the final legacy of Ssys’sekian cruelty on the planet. Now, these remnants hunted the ruins, red-eyed and vicious, always hungry, always ready to kill, chasing whatever ran.

*

The stag had gotten turned around inside the remains of an old Barnes & Noble. Boone could see it from her hiding spot. She could hear it crashing about. It was trapped behind the coffee bar. It bleated as it turned, panic-stricken, nostrils flaring, eyes wide. Its antlers tangled in the sagging chandelier.

The Broken spread out, approaching slowly, barking and stinking and stomping excitedly. They dragged their rebar spears, the metal sparking in the street. They slipped in through the empty windows, stalking closer between the toppled-over shelves and the rotted piles of rain-pulped books, closing in, surrounding the deer.

They rushed in, bellowing and hooting, ecstatic.

They stabbed the beast with their rebar spears, and the big stag kicked and screamed. They tackled it, their weight finally dragging it down. They reared up and hit it with hunks of concrete, again and again, the blood splattering.

Boone counted twelve. “We should go,” she whispered. They had lost the stag—there was no need to stay.

“Quiet,” Harris shushed her again. “Wait.”

*

Boone had always been quick with her blade.

Growing up in the ruins, she’d had to be. Feral dogs. Bandits. Rapists. All kinds of men and monsters. You had to be quick.

The Ssys’sekian Marauders were pretty tough, nothing but death forged in labs and built to kill, especially in the narrow confines deep within the ruins, where they were pure murder machines. But underneath their armor, they were just damp flesh wrapped in a protective fluid-filled sack that kept them alive. A quick jab in the right spot between their armor plating and the sack would part with a soft plop, like a lanced boil spewing a piss-warm spray that reeked of sulfur. Then they would screech and thrash, eye-stalks wilting inside their fishbowl helmets, the oily folds of their skin drying and cracking, orifices seeping a thick black goo, bodies contorting in painful spasms as their agonized cries trailed off. It was easy, if you were quick; but if you missed, that was it.

Boone had killed more than her share over the years.

Whenever she did get one, she would leave their corpses to be found by their kind. This would enrage the Ssys’sek, of course, and she had learned to be quick then too, to survive their reprisals, to hunker down as the Tick-tock hunters searched, or the orbital bombardments pounded the city.

She had outlasted it all.

She had survived until finally, she stood in the rubble and watched as the Ssys’sekian ships flew away, the deep bass thrum of their engines pressing against her, spirals of gritty dust whipping up around her as they rose into the sky.

She was a survivor.

*

Boone wasn’t afraid of a few Broken. She had faced them before. They were dangerous, yeah, especially in large packs, but in the end, nothing but animals. She could take four in a rush, maybe, if she was fast. Maybe more, if she was lucky, and the ground favored her.

Yeah, she flexed her fingers, Four, easy. Confident, steely-eyed.

The Broken huddled around the stag, the big ones close in, the small ones jostling around at the edges. The stag quivered and jerked and bled. They slurped and grunted and muttered and munched, dressed in their tattered skins and sun-faded rags, the remnants of the filthy clothes of their previous lives. Each one twisted and hobbled, all maimed and scarred, grafted with strange metal. They were all armed with rock and rusty rebar.

But could I take twelve? She paused, considered, Out in the open?

The biggest one in the pack wore a golden helm on its bald head, one of its dual curving horns broken off. His back was to Boone, a mess of scars, matted with a carpet of coarse gray curls from his shoulders down to his dirty ass crack. A line of tarnished silver metal plugs were implanted at the base of his neck, and clumps of twisted wires stuck out from between his ribs. He squatted in the middle of the group, right next to the stag, eating slowly, assured. The others gave him plenty of space.

Twelve was too many.

There was nothing here for them. There was no reason to stay.

“Let’s go,” Boone whispered, “while they’re busy.”

Harris shushed her.

Now that she had decided, the urge to move was too much. She had to get home. Without the stag, that was all that mattered, and they had let the Broken get too close. She swallowed; her throat etched with nervous acid. They can’t find us. We have to get home.  She still heard Tonya in her nightmares too, her terrified screaming as a pack of Broken dragged her from a hiding spot. Tonya had screamed and screamed and she only stopped when they had smashed her head in with a hunk of concrete. Boone could still hear that wet splat too. Her hands clenched into fists. We have to get home.

“The bag,” she gasped. “Oh, shit, Harris! The bag. I left it…”

He shushed her again, a harsh hissing slice of noise, a little too loud.

A blood-streaked head popped up out of the huddle.

They both froze.

The man was butt-chinned and wide-nosed beneath a tangled rat’s nest of black hair salted with gray. An old tie draped his bare chest, bloodstained shirtsleeves bunched up at his wrists. He stared around slow and suspicious. Then he nudged Horn-head, who turned on his haunches and looked around, squinty-eyed, slowly chewing, chin dribbling a gory red. After a moment, he shrugged, and they sank back into the bloody huddle.

Boone exhaled relief.

“They know we’re here,” Harris said.

“What? No, I don’t—”

“Watch.”

She did. She watched them snuffle and gnaw on sloppy, bloody fistfuls. She watched… and realized that their eating had slowed. She saw their eyes, their sidelong glances and slow, careful hands dragging rebar spears up off the concrete.

“Shit.”

“Get the bag,” Harris said, “and keep going. The Bancorp building is right behind us across the street. Go inside and up the escalators. Cut across the skyway and over into Macy’s, then over the Nicollet skyway and into the IDS and…”

“No,” she said.

“…get home.”

“No!”

“I’ll slow ‘em down.”

“No!”

He put a hand on her shoulder, “Boone, I’ll catch up.”

She gasped.

A sudden crash of memory. What do we call it? Danny’s voice in her head. Before she could stop it, she remembered him touching tiny toes and tiny fingers, his easy smile and blue-blue eyes as he did, his hands so rough, but his touch so soft, as he reached up to brush the dishwater hair from her eyes.

I’ll catch up, he had assured her.

*

She remembered trudging along in the crowd, her head down, and the ruined towers of the Twin Cities fading in the distance behind her, as the heat of the sun baked her neck. The air had been heavy and thick, damp, stifling. It draped over her. It pressed down on her, making every breath an effort. Her tired feet shuffled and scraped over the cracked asphalt, the relentless heat of the day burning up through the soles of her shoes. There seemed to be nothing but seas of grass in every direction, the long blades rattling in the wind. The crowd was constant low murmur of worry, pressed in too close, reeking of the stink of humanity and the piss-scent of fear. She felt the boom-thump of the artillery thunder rumbling in the distance in her stomach, trembling through the earth.

She remembered people scattering, screaming.

She remembered running, hiding in smoking wreckage that had once been a Cabella’s, as the deep hammer-blow of the Army’s last ditch efforts boomed outside, the cannons firing, firing, firing as a line of massive Ssys’sek Harvesters advanced on them, a storm of snatching tentacles and churning earth getting closer.

Go. Don’t worry. That was the last thing Danny ever said to her. I’ll catch up.

*

Never again.

“We stick together,” she spat, shaking Harris off.

Bam, bam, bam. A rhythmic banging, loud and echoing. They both stopped cold. Bam, bam, bam. Horn-head was pounding the floor of the blown-out Starbucks with his rebar. It was tipped with a big hunk of concrete. Bam, bam, bam. The others joined him, lengths of rebar banging on metal and water-warped wood. Bam, bam, bam. They turned, facing toward Harris and Boone hiding in the tank with their bloody, jagged-tooth grins.

Bam, bam, bam.

Jaw clenched, Harris said simply, “Don’t wait for me.”

He shoved past her, out of the dead tank, and out into the street.

The Broken surged up together, spears rattling. A woman rushed forward, ruddy and blonde and pig-faced. She was wearing a filthy, oversized purple shirt with a number seven across the front. It hung on her like a blood-drenched dress.

She screamed and threw her spear.

Harris leaned aside and the spear clanged off of the tank.

He straightened, nocked an arrow from the quiver on his hip, drew his bow and released, one smooth motion. Jersey-dress yelped. She stumbled and fell, a shaft sticking out of her thigh. He nocked another and fired, and was rewarded with another yelp. He drew a third, nocked, aimed, and released, and a third voice cried out.

The Broken scattered.

The old man threw a look back over his shoulder, “Run, Boone!”

She burst out of the tank and rushed around its scorched sides. His bow sang behind her. She heard a pained howl. “Come on!” She yelled, scooping up the duffel and throwing it over her shoulder as she ran. She leapt broken planters spilling dead trees and dry soil, threading through the stone garden at the front of the building. A spear flew past her, scraping a white chalk line across a chunk of decorative granite, and she dived in the lobby door, rolling on a carpet of dead leaves. Inside the entry to the building, the lobby ceiling soared above, open to the second floor, a pair of mangled escalators climbing their way up on one side.

She staggered to her feet and started climbing.

—

The Skyways

—

Harris stumbled into the lobby.

He nocked an arrow and let it fly. Spears banged off the cracked tiles around him, as he ducked and fired. From the top of the escalator, Boone could see six of the Broken out on the street, keeping low among the wrecked tanks. Harris kept shooting, his arrows striking flesh and bouncing off metal, but Boone could see that he only had two or three more shafts rolling around in his quiver.

“Come on!” She shouted.

He looked up at her. “I’m coming! Go!” He was flushed and sweating, breathing heavily. His arm shook as he drew and released. She heard another yelp.

“Harris,” she said. “Please. Come.”

“Boone, damn it! I will catch up!” He barked, nocked an arrow, and drew.

Rebar punched through him, a twisted stick of rusty iron. He grunted, and the arrow fell from his bow and bounced off the lobby floor. Bright red blood dribbled the long length of the spear and spattered the tile. He dropped to his knees, letting loose a long wheezy groan, then slumped and slowly fell over onto his side. A crimson pool of blood spread beneath him.

Boone couldn’t move. She couldn’t even scream.

She pressed dirty hands to her face.

Horn-head roared, rushing into the lobby and slamming his hammer down on Harris. He struck again and Boone heard bone snap. Jersey-dress limped in, the arrow still in her leg. She yanked the spear from Harris’ body with a grunt and held it aloft, screeching bloody victory. More of the Broken stepped into the lobby, and joined in on the celebration, hooting, dancing, and spinning around. A red-polo wearing brute, naked from the waist down, turned, shaking his fists in victory. And he saw Boone above him. His eyes went wide. He bellowed and threw his spear.

She ducked and it sailed over her head, banging off the wall behind her. That woke her up, and she ran, the duffel shifting, pulling on her shoulders, as the Broken screamed wildly behind her.

She didn’t look back.

Spears slammed into the rotted wall panels as she ran past, thunk, one, thunk, thunk, three in quick succession, stuck in the wall and quivering. Get home. She didn’t think about Harris. She couldn’t. Home. She focused on getting home. Get home. The hard edges inside the duffel poked her. Home. The opening to the skyway was a square of daylight just ahead.

Clang!

A spear bounced off the floor next to her and skittered away. She stumbled to the side, shocked, but still running.

Whack!

A spear smacked into a pillar as she raced past it, around a quick corner. She ducked aside, duct-taped sneakers squeaking, squinting against the spray of stone chips that peppered her face, a wall of broken windows and the skyway entrance before her.

Thud!

Suddenly punched in the back and knocked off her feet.

She grunted, and hit the floor in a sliding tangle. The duffel bag rode up on her shoulders and smacked her in the back of the head, her face smacking tile. Something cold and wet soaked her, it slicked the tile. She twisted around, wincing at the throb in her ribs. She looked over her shoulder.

A rebar spear was sticking straight up out of the duffel bag.

The spear had pierced the bag on one side, but not the other. The contents had slowed it down. Her ribs ached where it had thudded into her, tight and stinging, but…

At least I’m not dead.

She squirmed loose of the duffle bag’s straps and yanked the spear free, metal scraping metal, clumps of yellow matter clinging to the rusty shaft. She tossed it aside and slipped the bag back on, the slap of running feet quickly getting closer in her ears.

Shit! Get up! Get up!

She lurched up, too quick, slipping in the spilled liquid, scrambling to get to her feet, and the man in the red polo lunged at her, grabbing. Boone twisted, barely missing his grasping fingers. She caught his wrist and pulled, yanking as she turned, pulling him, and then letting go. The man stumbled past in a running fall, tumbling—bare ass and red polo—out the open window, and fell to the street below without a sound.

Tie-guy was right on top of her before she could run.

He grabbed at her and she ducked him, lunging up quickly, and slamming a shoulder into him, shoving him back. He caught the duffle bag as he fell. No! He spun her around, helpless within the bag’s straps as he threw her, tearing the bag off her as he did.

“No! Damn it!” She yelled, anger burning through her.

She hit the floor, rolling, shoes skidding. “That’s fucking mine!” She came up with her knife bare, and rushed the man, stabbing, stabbing, feeling the blade bite deep. Tie-guy grunted. She felt the edge scrape bone and she ripped it free, screaming as hot blood splashed down her arm, on her chest, across her face. She snatched the bag from him as he stutter-stepped back from her. He stared at his bloody palms, stared at her, mouth agape, and a ropey-red, steaming tangle hit the tile with a splat.

He fell.

Boone was running again, slinging the duffel bag over her shoulders.

She sprinted over the crumbling skyway as it stretched across the rubble-strewn street below. The bridge creaked, the floor spongey beneath her. She leapt the holes, their edges hidden by fluttering rags of rotted carpet, threatening to send her tumbling down to the broken, hard-edged rubble below. She could hear heavy footsteps behind her, coming up fast, shaking the old bridge, quickly closing the gap between them, quickly.

Too close.

She dropped suddenly, rolled.

Horn-head stumbled over her, tangling in her roll, tripping, as he swung his concrete-tipped length of rebar wildly, spinning. The heavy maul whistled as it cut the air and struck the skyway’s metal frame, the concrete chunk at the tip shattering. The bridge gonged like a struck bell, long and low, shaking. Boone hurriedly scrambled back from him on her butt, trying to get some distance between them, but the heavy and awkward duffel bag was slowing her down as all around her, metal screeched and snapped.

Ping! Again. Ping!

The bridge shuddered, the shaking getting worse, the groan of tortured metal continuing, dragging out, deepening. Horn-head loomed over her, naked except for his golden single-horned hem, filthy with gore, roaring, swinging his rebar. Boone lunged aside, barely avoiding his strike. The skyway’s groan became a screech, metal tearing and snapping, and the whole thing started to twist and tip.

Horn-head stumbled, flailing desperately for something to grab onto. Boone was pure desperation, rolling to her feet, running, leaping, nothing but animal instinct, racing for the dark hole of Macy’s store at the far end of the skyway, in a cacophony of tearing metal. The skyway dropped, sudden open air beneath her toes.

She leapt.

—

Macy’s

—

She hit the edge of dirty tile, hard, groaning, and started to slide back.

She scrabbled for a grip, rushing to pull herself farther inside. The building’s brick façade tore loose around her, crashing down, booming in the street below her, a cloud of dust blasting up in a gritty, choking fist.

Boone lay on her side on the second floor of the ruins of Macy’s, panting, coughing, trying to catch her breath. She laid there for a long moment, wheezing and breathing hard, and then finally raised her head to a world of quiet, chalky white. She was laying at the broken edge of the building’s second floor. She stood, slow, aching, and coughing from the gritty haze, duct-taped toes of her sneakers right at the edge.

She hefted the duffel bag and looked down into the ruined street.

The wind swept the dust away in great swirling swaths. The wreckage of the skyway emerged from the murk like a ship from the fog, lying across the rubble that already filled Eighth Avenue, spreading across the street between the two buildings in a jumble of jagged, rusted metal, old carpet and glittering bits of glass. There were dust-darkened splatters of blood splashed everywhere. She could see broken limbs amongst the wreckage. Horn-head stood in the center of it all.

He glowered up at her.

“Son of a…” Boone breathed ragged disbelief. Her hands were empty. Her sheathe was empty. She’d lost her knife. “Shit.”

Hornhead’s helmet was gone. He was dusted completely white from head to toe, the dust cut with trickles of bright red blood. His right arm was broken, a jagged bit of bone punching through the skin of his forearm. It dangled at his side, dripping red. He clutched a length of bent rebar in his left hand, clenching his fist tight. He stared at Boone with a naked black hatred.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…rum-rumble-rumble…

The world seemed to thrum and shake. The street, the rubble, the pile of concrete and twisted metal, it all heaved up at once, twice, and dropped.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…

The sound echoed.

Boone gasped. No! That’s not possible! Horn-head spun around too, sudden animal terror contorting his scarred face, staring at the ground. They’re gone! They’re all gone! Cold panic drenched Boone as she staggered back from the building’s edge and the rubble in the street moved again, rising and falling like a giant drawing breath beneath their feet, pieces scraping and sliding to the side with each rising and falling.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…

It can’t be! There’s no Tick-tock Hunters left!

A big, spiked metal ball punched up through the concrete, attached to a snaking, segmented metal arm. A second spiked metal ball punched up through the rubble close by. A third appeared farther away. More segmented metal arms burst loose, some tipped in grabbing pincers, others with circular saw blades that screeched and bit down into the rubble. Metal tentacles smashed at the ground. They tore at it. They threw it aside. One long metal arm suddenly flung out, wrapping Horn-head, bundling him up tight, and he screamed as it lifted him into the air. It tick-tick-ticked, as its metal coils squeezed and tightened down, and the man screamed and screamed as he was waved about in the air, and the other arms tore at the rubble in the street, flinging it aside.

Boone turned and ran.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…

Behind her, Horn-head’s screams grew louder, chasing her deeper into the hazy gloom of the old building, through shafts of weak sunlight, past the rubble and the ruin and all the forgotten old world things left behind. Over the Nicollet skyway, Harris had said, and into the IDS and… She ran for the bright light shining across the room.

Home.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…

She heard a wet bursting pop and splatter, and a sound like a sudden rainsquall, and there were no more screams.

Tick-tick… tick-tick-tick… tick…

She ran, head down, dodging refuse. An explosion boomed behind her, shaking the building, almost knocking her over in a blast of heat and wind shoving through the ruined store. Metal clanked and stone thudded, a gritty storm falling behind her. She slid around a corner, pressing back against a wall, hiding, getting small, flushed and gasping, heart trying to hammer its way out of her chest. She clutched the duffel bag to her, and carefully peeked back the way she had come.

The hole in the building was obscured by haze of dust, shimmering bright from the sun. Something big moved within it, slow and ponderous, tiny glints of metal winking in the swirling murk like distant stars, lurching and shifting, rusty metal groaning. Tick-tick-tick… She could hear the thunderous fall of its steps. So she hid, she waited, because she knew what this thing was.

She had known them since the invasion.

*

Tick-tock Hunters were built to hunt.

Massive metal balls dropped from orbit, filled with sensors, festooned with waving metal tentacles, they were mindless, relentless, and focused on their one task.

Find humans. Kill humans. Destroy their shelters.

They wandered, listening, sniffing, their sensors tick-tick-ticking as they searched, announcing their presence, waiting for any humans who may have escaped detection to run in panic. When they found them, the Tick-rock Hunters would lock on, smashing through ruins, uprooting trees, overturning earth, rushing to murder what they could catch, launching a swarm of micro-trackers to tag the runners, and then pursuing, running their prey to ground, finding their nests, and sending a tangle of deadly metal tentacles deep into their bolt-holes and bunkers, their hidey-holes and hidden spaces, finding the people cowering there, finding flesh, tearing, rending, ripping to shreds, and tossing the bloody pieces aside.

They were the Scourer of Worlds.

She hadn’t seen one in years, not since the end of the occupation.

They had been underground, in the lower levels of an old parking garage. They only heard the ticking a brief moment before, just a split second before it tore open their hiding spot, reaching with its snaking metal arms and screeching saws, lightning fast and whipping about in the sudden din of screaming chaos. It had killed almost everyone she knew in a few heartbeats, a deluge of blood and gristle splatter. It had torn Scott’s legs off. Only she and Harris had survived intact.

*

Boone closed her eyes and prayed that the ticking tentacles wouldn’t come probing into the store after her, prayed that thick wiggling tangle of extending arms wouldn’t push through the rubble and refuse, hunting her trail, its sensors sniffing, its claws grasping, it saws whirring and ready to bite down.

She waited.

She had thought the Tick-tock Hunters were all gone now, gone or destroyed. This one must have been too damaged or too buried, or shut down, so it was left behind. The skyway crashing down on the rubble it was buried under must have triggered it somehow, woken it back up, and put it on the hunt again.

She waited for the ticking to stop suddenly, to focus, to lock on. She waited. Waited, but… Nothing.

She could hear it clanking still out there, at the end of the block. She could hear its thuds and groan as it moved about, but the movement sounded awkward and uneven, stumbling. She listened. It didn’t seem to be hunting at all. It groaned with stressed metal, screeching. Its ticks hitched and caught. She crawled out onto the skyway over Nicollet Avenue, and peeked over the edge and down the street.

The Tick-tock Hunter lumbered out into the far intersection.

It was still massive, it still looked dangerous, it was still a nightmare machine of waving tentacles and weapons, but it had seen better days. This Hunter was a rusted ruin, its metal carapace was dented, broken, torn open in places and scorched. It was dragging some of its arms. Half of its sensors were broken off, and most of it guns were bent and fire-blackened.

It’s junk, she realized, half dead, left behind junk.

Tick-tick…tick…t…ti… ti…t-t-t-t-t…

She watched as it staggered and swayed wildly, its balance getting worse, arms buckling and finally collapsing in a heap, crashing down in the streets, clanging, banging, and winding down, laying on the same tank she and Harris had been hiding in just a few minutes ago. It shuddered and shook, tremors running through its many tentacles. Wispy tendrils of smoke leaked from it, the wind pulling the hazy gray ribbons to tatters, and the world was quiet again, but Boone didn’t move.

She waited. She listened.

It was quiet.

Run.

—

IDS Tower

—

Boone sprinted across the creaking Nicollet Skyway, and into the sun-streaked cavern at the foot of the IDS tower. The massive metal framework domed overhead, rusty and dusty and filled with the hushed quiet of its own perpetual twilight. The lobby trees had gone wild long ago. Their branches twined in the rafters, filling the space. The lobby floor was carpeted with dead leaves and twinkling shards of glass.

The IDS tower loomed high above, shadowed and broken.

They’d been camping in the tower’s upper reaches all summer. Most of the main stairwell was still intact and only some of it was exposed to the elements. She still had to scale the last few floors, clinging to crumbling platforms, her toes wedged into cracks and her body straining as she hauled herself up, as pebbles fell, clattering the long way down.

She paused at the end, sitting on the edge of the very top, fifty-one flights, her legs dangling over the long drop as she caught her breath, listening as the tower swayed, the wind keening through its open floors, whipping her hair.

The stairwell door was crammed with broken desks and piled chairs. She got down on her knees and crawled beneath, pushing the heavy duffel before her and out into the open floor beyond.

Then she was finally home.

“Welcome back,” Scott waited on the far side.

She could see his gaunt face and the frayed collar of his old fatigues as he crouched behind an overturned desk, peering at her. He still shaved his head, still a soldier. He pointed his battered M4 at the ceiling. It was probably loaded with all four of the bullets he had left.

“I was getting worried,” he said.

Boone stood, dusting herself off. “She awake?”

“Is that thing full?” Scott gasped, swinging himself out and around the desk.

His legs ended at the knees.

“Yeah,” she kicked the bag. “Lots of cans. A few Twinkies. Is she awake?”

He swung himself over, hands and stumps, hands and stumps, the rifle slung across his back, focused on the duffel. “In the bassinet,” he answered absently. “How much did we get?”

“Plenty…” Boone dunked her hands into one of their rain barrels, the water icy cold. She scrubbed, sluicing off the blood, and left Scott to dig in the duffle, emptying it, errant silver cans rolling across the floor.

One office was still protected by four walls that were mostly intact, and the bassinet was just a filing cabinet drawer stuffed with blankets, coats, towels, anything soft and warm that they could find. The baby was snuggled down within, wrapped in an old sweater. She cooed up at Boone, arms reaching. She had dishwater blonde hair just like her mama, and blue-blue eyes just like her father Danny. Their sweet summer child. Boone knelt down next to her, sniffing, smiling, and blinking back happy tears.

“Hey baby,” she whispered, “Mama’s home.”

“Hey, where’s the old man?” Scott called, but trailed off as he heard the answer in her long heavy silence.

She lifted the baby. It kicked and babbled and Boone held her close, pressing her face into the child’s soft, sweet-smelling warmth. Little fingers curled in her hair, pulling. She sat cross-legged by the office door, cradling the baby, and looked out over the broken topple of the Twin Cities.

A chill wind cut in.

The hazy smear of the sun dipped down to touch the horizon, and the clouds lit up, slashing the sky with pinks, oranges, and deep reds, sliding into a purpled darkness. A blanket of shadow had begun to settle over the ruins of the city, and the sludgy trickle of the Mississippi wad just a dark ribbon in a stoney trench threading through the center.

Scott dragged himself over, an awkward one-handed slide. He held out a scuffed and dented silver can, the lid bent back. There were sliced peaches in sauce within. “The Twinkies were pulped, man,” he reported.

“Those Twinkies saved my life, man,” she said, with a pointed look.

“I saw the hole.” He held up his own can, reached out and tapped it against hers. “To Twinkies, then. Turns out they are good for you after all.” They each let out a small laugh as he settled in next to her. “It’s cold as shit up here today,” he said, spooning cold corn into his mouth.

“Yeah, down on the street too,” she said. “We’re gonna have to ditch this place soon, find someplace new… warmer… safer.”

Horns sounded in the ruins far below them, harsh and echoing. The Broken loose in the city, on the hunt.

He snorted, “Good luck with that.”

She sighed. “We should maybe leave the city, y’know.”

He just looked at her, then motioned first at his legs, then at the baby, and then looked at Boone with a dubious cock to his head, “How’re we gonna do that?”

She squinted in the last glare of the setting sun. “We’re gonna stick together,” she mashed a peach slice between her fingers and fed it to the baby. Then, quietly, “I thought of a name.”

“Oh, yeah?” He said. “Finally,” he teased.

“It had to be right,” Boone said. She was still smiling. She couldn’t seem to help herself anymore, not when she was home, not with her baby in her arms. “She’s a new person in a new world. It had to be right.”

“So? Let’s hear it.”

“Harris,” she said. “I’m going to name her Harris.”

“For a girl?” Scott raised an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” she smirked and mashed a bit of peach at him. “It’s a good name. She should know him…him and her father. Harris Daniel Ruin-runner.”

“That’s quite a mouthful for a small kid.” He said. He looked at her, but she said nothing. He chewed, thought, and shrugged. “Sure, why not? New world, right?”

“A new world,” Boone smiled as little Harris gummed peach mush.

THE END