We fought on. Above us, just smoke and jagged black rocks. And below us, the river of fire getting wider, and the far cliffs receding further each time I looked.
The lava was so bright it was blinding, and it singed your nostrils and droned in your eardrums, so you got full of it, became a part of it, moving inside the flame. And I started to reckon somewhere that lava would cool and turn into rock, and someday, perhaps, that rock might be mountains. For every end, there’s a beginning, I guess. And maybe all that burns comes back.
And as if to mark this chaos and creation, people had once built walls here. Long ago, before their sky was encased in this hot, rocky tomb. Before the lava had burst forth and ruptured. Before the Darkness, I suppose. Before the stars fell from the sky.
Somewhere in those distant days, in the glory of the old world, people had built walls, homes and roads here at the dormant gates of hell. Because up ahead, below the ridge we were on, stood the singed carcass of a dead settlement. And while the buildings back in the lake had been sunk and frozen, these buildings looked like they’d been cooked alive.
They were just shells, really. Blackened ruins, surrounded by lava and stripped naked by fire. But it weren’t the buildings that interested me, it was the slab of roads that was tethered to the city. A gnarled old network of highways that seemed to bounce and float upon the lava. A mess of old asphalt strips, clogged full of cars.
“There’s our way across,” I said, grabbing Alpha and Kade beside me. I pointed at the floating chunk of ancient roads that led out from the remains of the city to the other side of the lava. I felt Alpha lean against me like she was about to fall, and I shook her. “Come on,” I shouted. “We’re almost there.”
The ledge we’d been working along led all the way down to the city, though it meant we had to drop closer to the terrible heat. We edged lower, turning rigid when the Rift roared with some new fury and lava shot up in towering spurts. Ash falling. Smoke everywhere. I could feel my bones baking and my brains getting fried.
I used the sub gun like a crutch, leaning on it as I staggered forward. And now and then, I still checked the path behind us. But if anyone had followed us down here, they’d have to be as near dead as us.
We hit the crumbling streets of concrete and embers, then struggled on through the city, making our way to the car-clogged highways that floated beyond the jumbled old walls. The buildings offered some protection, shielding us from the heat, and we stopped and rested amid them. Everything caked with rubble and painted with soot.
I was sore and suckered, the pack heavy against my sweaty spine. I went to spit but had no spit in me, so I just slumped there and listened to the Rift bubble and blow in the distance, like it was waiting on us, knowing we had to face it in the end.
Everything had looked black and empty inside the buildings, but I pushed myself to my feet and staggered closer to a broken window. The others called to me, but I waved them off. Just kept wondering if there was anything left inside this burned out shell. An old world can of food, maybe. An ancient glass bottle with some water inside.
I kicked out the last bits of broken glass from the window, prodding it clear with the sub gun, then shoved my way in.
The ash was so thick, I had to wade through it, and I knew right away the place had been picked over plenty. Probably got scavenged as soon as the Darkness began.
I worked my way deeper, though. Just in case something had survived. I climbed past counters and boxes, shelves that had long ago turned frail in the heat. Had been some sort of market once. In the days when there’d been more to eat than GenTech’s Superfood. But everything fell apart when I touched it, and I realized just being in there was stupid. We needed to get out of the city, get across the lava, and get away from all this.
I heard scraping noises above me, somewhere inside the building. A shuffling sound. And I picked up my pace, finding the broken window and climbing back out. Figured that building was getting ready to tumble.
As we stepped onto the twist of highways leading out of the city, the ground shifted and swayed beneath us. Hell, this rocky chunk of tarmac bobbed in the lava the same way our old boat had once bobbed on that lake. Until the boat sank, that is. But I couldn’t think about sinking as we began squeezing between the old cars and climbing across their remains, making our way through the scrap that choked the old road.
We crawled and jumped from the roof of one car to another. Namo and Crow lagging behind us, the mammoth shoving the charred metal out of his way. And we were a good ways from the city now. I mean, we were committed to following this slab of highway, no matter how much it spindled and swam. I could see where it reached to the cliffs in the distance, and we were getting there. Choked and staggered, but getting there. Long as this burned memory of the old world could keep us afloat.
I lost my footing and slipped through a car windshield. Alpha grabbed me, dragging me out through a coal-dust cloud. I felt the car shift, then slide a little. The rocks beneath us stretching. Buckling. The lava churning underneath.
I cinched the pack of trees even tighter to my back.
“He’s too heavy,” Alpha shouted, pointing up at the mammoth as he rumbled past us. That big ball of fur had his small eyes stretched wide, and they darted this way and that way, and he was moving all jittery, like the ground was scorching him. He was shoving the cars out of his way quicker now, and when they slowed him down, he’d damn near start hopping on the spot.
“Crow,” I called. “Calm him down.”
But Crow was already trying to hold the beast steady, and it weren’t doing no good. And then Kade was hollering. He was up ahead of us, and I could hardly hear him above the roar of the lava, but he was screaming, pointing behind me.
I stared back, gazing across the tombstone traffic, studying the black cliffs and the black buildings. And then I saw it. In the city. All over the city.
It looked as if the walls were alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I thought my eyes were messed up. Either that or my brain. Looked like the buildings were melting. Crumbling. But the buildings were still standing there in the same damn place. Then I realized something was creeping down the side of them. And whatever it was, it was coming our way.
I could see the shapes crawling out of the city. Rushing across the broken old roads towards us.
“Go.” I pushed Alpha before me. “Run.”
“Crow,” she screamed. “Move.”
We raced across the cars. Fear mining some last strength from our bones. Namo storming ahead, stomping through the gridlock.
I reached Kade. Tried to help him move faster.
“No.” He shook his head, staring behind me. “Start shooting.”
I spun around. And there they were. Coming out of the shadows. Scuttling over the cars and trucks. And you wouldn’t call them human. You’d never recognize them as that.
But that’s what they’d been, I reckon. Once.
Now they were warped bones and scraps of skin, buried in ash and bulging blue veins. Eyes like something out of your worst nightmare. Hands and feet crawling over the machines their forebears had ground to a halt. Mouths like open wounds.
And what filth had they fed upon? For how many years?
I remembered the Kalliq forcing that injured mammoth down into the mud pit. Realized the sacrifice those people had made. Sending mammoths down here to keep these monsters at bay, I reckon. Because these devils sure looked hungry.