CHAPTER 35: A NEW CITY [1]

Out of the frying pan and into fire was just a joke.

After finally leaving the confines of the Ashroad, they felt relief. Besides, the sight of a new city, though ruined gave them hope for the future.

Cautiously, they entered the city. By noon the city rose out of the rippled heat, jagged and black-toothed, a skyline chewed down to stumps.

The last ribbon of fused glass from the Ashroad finally gave way to cracked asphalt, and the sound of their boots changed from hiss to crunch as they moved through the ruined city.

Wind moved through empty streets, and they could see signs of devastation left by the apocalypse on this city.

Just beside the road, a toppled bus lay like a whale on its side, windows punched out, char streaks fanning along its flank. And far off in the distance, a tower leaned into another like two drunks holding each other up.

"Eyes," Reid said, his voice raw but steady.

He walked, not quite as straight as he used to, but straight enough as the others followed him, alert. Jonas had his pack; Kara shadowed his flank, casual in the way of someone ready to break the world in half.

As for Holt, as the scout, he ranged a pace forward ahead of the others, reading the ground the way some men read faces.

They passed the first barricade at the city line, a barricade of cars arranged nose-to-tail across an avenue, and doors welded with scavenged rebar.

The metal had bubbled where heat once tried to melt it, and someone had spray-painted across it in jagged letters.

[DON’T COME HERE.]

Below it, another hand had added.

[BRING MORE AMMO.]

At that moment, the system panel flickered again in their vision, neutral as a machine as it reminded them as if they forgot.

~----~

[New Zone Entered: Ruined Urban Core]

~----~

Travis whistled under his breath. "So... homey," he chuckled. "The system is almost like my nagging grandmother. That old hag could remind you of one thing like 20 times a day! Damn, I miss her".

"Formation tight," Holt murmured, ignoring Travis’s words. His head tilted toward a drift of gray on the asphalt. "Boot sign," he warned. "Two, maybe three days old, size tens and elevens. They’re not animal".

Jonas grunted. "Good, people. Maybe friendly, maybe useful."

"Or maybe both of those are dead words," Kara said.

Jonas smirked at her.

They advanced.

The urban predators of the ruined city announced themselves early; eyes in storm drains, and the scrabble of claws in dark shop mouths. The system picked them up like a bored clerk scanning barcodes.

DING!

~----~

[Swarm Detected: Gutter Rats – F Rank]

...

[Perch Murder Detected!]

[Class: Corvid Mutations]

Rank: F.

~----~

"Damn!" Jonas exclaimed at the system notification. "There’s a monster bird named Perch Murder? So badass".

Ethan winced at his loud voice. "Keep it down, will you?"

Jonas chuckled. "We’re safe brother, we’re no longer in that godforsaken road. At least, here in the city, there are no illusions". He smiled, clearly feeling good about himself.

The first wave came as a ripple across a crosswalk as rats the size of small dogs, bald patches showing gray skin under wiry fur, with teeth like yellow nails burst out of hidden alleys and charged at them.

They flowed around a rusted sedan and surged at the line.

"Hold," Reid snapped, his Rifle dipping even as his breath narrowed.

Time slipped a gear as he triggered his ability...

[Perception Slow!]

Reid took careful aim, and then he painted a neat, impossible arc across the first three skulls leading the charge.

Bam... bam... bam...

They dropped without sound, paws still twitching.

Jonas stepped forward and turned the next pair into paste with two quick boot-stomps. Kara slid through the line and speared the one trying to flank them under the bumper, her bone-dense leg bracing against the impact.

Almost at the same time as the Gutter Rats attacked, the Perch Murders, badass creatures like Jonas called them finally attacked.

A hundred black birds slicked off a neon sign three stories up and dove as one at the group. The sight of them swooping down from the sky was honestly terrifying, but this group have seen and survived even more terrifying things.

Holt beat them to the corner and unleashed three shots with pinpoint accuracy, three pieces falling from the sky.

Mira’s hand cut the air and wind shredded the flock sidewise, sending birds pin wheeling into an alley where they beat themselves against brick and didn’t rise again.

"Keep moving," Reid said.

The street looked the same in every direction; broken windows, hanging signage, and a hundred dark mouths that could hold anything.

Ethan kept his Wheel leashed. It pulsed anyway, interested, as if the city itself made it hungry. He let it eat a little.

Then...

DING!

~----~

[Improvised Gear: Pulse Net – F Rank]

Low-frequency grid that herds small swarms toward chokepoints. 20 seconds duration.

~----~

He flicked the net down across an alley, the grid humming like a faraway transformer. The Gutter Rats nosed toward the vibration and pooled, confused, staggering into a low stairwell where Holt could cut them down as they bunched.

His shots were quick and clean. They didn’t waste ammunition or time gloating; they knew that in the apocalypse, efficiency was King.

As they walked, they found clues of people in the wreckage.

They saw a child’s sneaker tucked into the small wedge between two bus seats, a camp under a bank’s drive-through, half-burned bedrolls and a circle of stones gone cold, signs of recent use.

They also found tripwire remnants laced low between a pair of dumpsters, the kind of wire you only spot when it’s singing.

Holt tapped it with a pen and the filaments sang. He cut the line with two fingers and a scowl.

"Ambush lanes," he said softly. "Good ones."

Kara crouched beside a spray of gouges along the curb, following them to a smear that wasn’t quite blood. "Someone dragged something heavy through this area, or someone."

"Friendly?" Travis asked, hopeful.

"Professional," Holt answered, which was not the same word.

They ate on the move. They ate warm ration bars and a blessed can of peaches Travis found intact in the ruins of a corner store.

He cracked the lid and inhaled like a sinner at the door of a church. "Nectar," he declared, handing out slices with sticky fingers.

For a minute, their faces loosened. Kara actually licked juice from her thumb and closed her eyes, pretending that she hadn’t.

Smiling, Ethan forced himself to look up, away from the simple bliss of sugar. For some reason, every window felt like an eye. Every gust of wind carried dust and a smell under the city’s rot that he couldn’t place, like breath with intent.

Holt noticed it too.

He flicked his chin toward the roofs once and then again, as if counting. "We’re being watched," he said under his breath.

"..."