The floods killed off whoever was too slow to get to high ground, which was nearly everyone, and it had taken decades to find a way around several wall-like structures of debris that effectively ringed the ruins from the swollen Ohio River southward. An enterprising salvage crew manned by a hardass named Cynthia Pennyroyal finally broke through just north of the tusks that were once a bridge connected to Indiana. Landing her four salvage boats on the shattered remains of the Louisville riverfront, she lost three experienced men in the span of a minute—one to drowning, while two were eaten whole by a crocodilian nearly sixty-feet long that had been waiting in the toxic muck under the bridge pilings. A lucky shot from her pilfered M72 LAWS rocket went through the beasts’ eye and detonated in its cavernous skull with a gelatinous thud. Her crew, now only nine strong, had spent two days skinning the monster, taking every claw, tooth, and bit of rib bone they thought could be used. The talons, nearly two-feet long, were blacker than the soul of a horse trader, and just as sharp. Cynthia mourned her lost men with a toast from her stores of honest-to-god bourbon, saluted their corpses that were now hidden in the gut of that unholy creature, and then stepped confidently into the debris that used to be a city.
The find was life-changing. Her crew would never want for anything, ever again, and the runoff from such an enormous haul meant that she could trade at will with every township in a five-hundred mile radius. Cynthia’s team set about securing the opening with deadfalls and other traps; nowhere in the new world order did the term sharing ever get bandied about, and they weren’t about to begin charity work anytime soon. Humanity was important, but so was business, and Cynthia was an expert at making both ideas work together.
8
New Madrid, August 4, 2074 A.D.
From any height or distance, the town looked remarkably like a series of lumps covered in vegetation. Closer, the design of the houses became clear, and after the facts of the area became apparent, the residences appeared downright ingenious. Low, semi-buried walls left little above ground, and thus little to attack in the event of an overrun from Underneath. All of the streets bowed back in a crescent, where they eventually gave way to the sprawl of farms that provided the bulk of the food for the 1800 residents. The roofs of each house were cleverly terraced bed gardens, each covered in a riot of various herbs, peppers, tomatoes, and other plants that yielded high value with minimal work. At the center of the town stood the taller but still terraced Grange Hall, a modest building of one and a half stories that had actual glass windows. South of town, an active creek was dammed three times in less than a mile, and hydroelectric stations, small but effective, sat perched at each of the most stable bank areas. The streets were graveled and there were pads of concrete visible as well, although those appeared to be more for stabilizing the land than transportation. A single, well-groomed rail spur passed in between the town proper and the first fields. Slightly elevated and parked above an endless ribbon of chipped granite and schist, the rails curved off into the distance; two bright lines reflecting the sun until they winked out under the swell of ripening wheat and oats. The trains, truncated affairs of a kludged engine and a few cars, would arrive infrequently from either direction. There was a reasonably functional loop that linked up as far as the ruins of Chicago to the north and Corinth, Mississippi to the southeast. Their primary function was trade, but sometimes refugees arrived as well, usually a few days after the killing moon. It was understood that with each dark night of the month, another community, sometimes two, would fall to the predations of the hordes raiding from cave systems across the continent. The dirty, wounded survivors would arrive dehydrated and near catatonic. They rarely had any goods or trade items, but their labor and expertise were welcomed just the same. New Madrid had need of residents. Underneath did not stop claiming victims just because the lifeblood of the town was being drained away, one screaming kill at a time. Salvage was by definition an uncertain pursuit; the men and women risking their lives to pry goods from the dead cities could be relied only as long as they survived. Their rough trade was a calling, not a career, and they were often regarded with a healthy respect. French expected a train soon, and his eyes flickered down the length of track, wondering how far away the inevitable conglomerate of rail cars and broken souls might be. He felt a kinship to the people who braved the dangers of overland train travel because he had been one such soul not a year earlier.
French was born and bred to the westernmost portion of the Appalachians near what had been Asheville, North Carolina. His parents were, in their original incarnation, an artist and a college professor, but those occupations fell by the wayside when the entire world went to hell. Asheville resisted the fallout with stolid resilience. It may have been the excellent location, or perhaps it was the wildly-diverse artistic community with rustic skills that suddenly came back in fashion. No matter what confluence of luck and ability Asheville possessed, it worked. French’s parents were no shrinking violets, and the maxim he’d grown up with—never stop learning—became a fact of life that could, at the very least, preserve some sliver of hope for their familial future. From an early age, it became clear that he was a child who would need little in the way of encouragement. His parents mined every resource possible to salvage books, maps, and anything of note that could prepare him for the savagery that waited just outside the bucolic setting of the robust city in the forest. For nearly six decades, Asheville didn’t just survive, it grew. Twin landmarks on opposite sides of the valley were appropriated and developed as nerve centers. On one side, the vast sprawl of the Biltmore estate stood watch, its grounds teeming with activity as a market, meeting place, and nexus for local defense. Opposite the noble Biltmore was the other city sentinel, The Grove Park Inn. Both locations boasted excellent views, access, and naturally-occurring defenses that only buttressed the success of Asheville, and after fifty-nine years, it looked like the forests of Western Carolina were going to be the launching pad for a regional government.
That dream ended with a roar. On July nineteenth, fifty-nine years after the first emergence of dragons, and fifty-eight years after the first hellspawn leapt upward to feed, Asheville was attacked by three—and only three—monsters of such hideous power that the land shook with their overland arrival. The first hint that something was wrong came in the form of nearly a thousand dead livestock tumbling down the confluence of the Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers. Scouts at the limits of the defensive ring raised the alarm immediately upon sighting the gore-clogged rivers rising up their well-tended banks. Hogs, horses, and cattle of all sizes were gashed open, presumably drained of blood, and tossed into the river somewhere upstream. The pale, pink flesh of the dead animals was unnaturally light in color, and many were missing their heads. Crawling on and in each carcass were grotesque, misshapen lice, nearly the size of a lobster. More than one of the townsfolk went to investigate, only to recoil in horror upon examining the crustaceans. At the end of the waving tendrils that sprouted from their carapace, were human eyes and rasping feline tongues protruding from the general vicinity of their mandibles. They croaked and groaned, and one militiaman, a steady veteran of two decades, swore that the louse he picked up laughed at him. Rumor spread at the speed of fear, and there were no less than six sightings of a robed figure in the forest on the opposite side of the defensive lines. Panic was on the verge of dissolving what defenses Asheville had in place until the rather prosaic issue of the river and livestock caused the town to refocus on the immediate issue. Mass death was nothing new, but the volume of carcasses was so great that the river began to clog, and then rise, threatening to burst free and undo years of backbreaking work by the city and her people. A savvy governor named Amanda Larson swiftly began moving militia into the area. While her instincts were correct, no one could have possibly been prepared for what arrived behind the mounds of dead livestock.
The first of the Unholy Trinity, as they were coined, burst from the river on six squat, muscular legs. Nearly seventy feet in leng
th, the creature was smooth and featureless, right down to the short, unremarkable tail that lashed the water to muddy froth as it powered toward the hastily organizing soldiers. They needn’t have bothered with their small arms. In seconds, the maw of the beast opened to reveal a circular row of needle-like fangs that flipped outward into a halo nearly ten feet across. The monster was stupidly single-minded, but it was enough. The scarlet mouth was the only color on the oddly pale behemoth, and it began to dart forward and impale screaming men and women with terrifying speed. The rules of engagement became simple: once the fangs touched a human, all blood was drained from their flailing body until they ceased struggling, then the fangs, operating with complete independence, would flip outward and discard the remains. In short order, additional troops and some bold citizens began to unleash massive amounts of gunfire into the gray flesh of the lamprey lizard, causing it to slow appreciably. Several militias with massive fifty caliber rifles on low tripods began adding their hammering shots to the melee with obvious effect. Gouts of fluid and flesh blew skyward with each booming impact from the riflemen, whose rate of fire was slower than the militia. With the enormous knockdown power of the .50 calibers in play, a crescent of soldiers began to advance on the beast, and it looked like a pyrrhic victory would soon be at hand. When three massive reports sounded at once, and the targeted heavy fire struck in a fusillade of destruction, the skull of the creature caved in with the ripping sound of an enormous tree being felled. The monster, then covered in oozing wounds, slowed to a stop, raised its eyeless head to the skies, and loosed a long keening howl of anger and frustration. The ruined skull crashed to the earth with a massive splash of pink liquid and gore, and an uneasy quiet settled over the thick haze of smoke. The wounded cried out as rescuers began to move warily forward, giving as wide a berth as possible to the still-twitching corpse. And then the forest exploded.
Matching horrors rampaged forward from the mountainside, with shrieks that froze the blood of everyone in the valley. Scaled and apelike, the putrid gray pair of demons stood four stories tall, both armored with bone plating that gleamed like poisonous fruit. Where the lizard had been silent, these two uttered glass-rattling howls from the moment they spied the masses of defenders standing near their downed compatriot. In a blur, one of the monsters accelerated away and up the mountain, crashing through trees in a cacophony of destruction that seemed totally without purpose . . . until it stopped.
Oh, shit, the town collectively swore when nearly forty thousand people realized they were bracketed with nowhere to run. An unseen command was shared, and both animals flashed into action incongruous with their heavy builds. The apes were athletic, angry, and remorseless. They smashed and grabbed in a whirlwind of destruction, flattening buildings and hurling people into the air, or crunching them between molars the size of washing machines. The screams and chaos were too much, and panic overwhelmed many of the militia who were still in shock from the butchery of the first attack. French, a master woodsman and officer in the militia, was out of the fight on a salvage meeting nearly three miles away. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had the presence of mind to flee for their bolt hole when it became obvious that the fight was over. Humanity had lost. By the time he reached the outer defensive ring, it was apparent that Asheville, the hope of a new nation and the center of what was called the Cherokee State, wasn’t just going to be sacked, it was doomed. Despite the unrelenting mania of the monsters, the big guns of the militia still boomed out at regular intervals. It was obvious that they were having an effect, because one creature could not raise its left arm, and the other had sheets of putrescent emerald fluid raining from one eye. Both were wounded, but the largest of the pair wasn’t done. It lunged and tore with renewed vigor, raging over homes that had been crushed more than once. At that point, the attack had passed the one hour mark, an ungodly amount of time for such terror to reign unabated. Thousands of dead were scattered through the debris, and French could see horses and riders in full gallop leaving in every direction. The city was dead. The state was no more, and when French saw the matchsticks that had been his parent’s home, he knew his life in Asheville had ended. He gathered two small watertight trunks from the remains of the only home he’d ever known, which was now collapsed downward with the enormous weight of not one but two giant strikes from the monsters. He prized two rifles and ammunition from the space that had been his father’s shed, and counted his lucky stars that both were undamaged. A Browning pistol was beyond repair, and he dropped the once-noble weapon into the mud with a pang of regret. Following an arterial spray of blood, he found his mother’s hand, and nothing else. Numb with loss, he began to dig, but then stopped as the enormity of the day settled on his heart with a painful constriction.
A dazed neighbor whose shirt was impossibly clean, despite his wounds, looked up at French, who asked simply, “My father?”
A short grim shake of his neighbor’s head told him everything he needed to know. He sensed without searching that his wife was already long gone, and let a shaky sigh leave his body.
“My wife?” he asked.
The neighbor stood thinking. “She left in a hurry before the . . . before the attack started. Told my wife to get out, said that she saw something on the bank of the river. Someone, I mean.” His neighbor paused and spat blood. His shirt was blooming red now, but when French made to assist him, he was waved off with a sad smile. “Got hit from behind.” He turned slowly to show his back to French, and a long sliver of metal protruded from high on his spine. “It’s in my lung. You go to that wife of yours. She took some stuff with her, said you would know where she was. She asked me to get my family, too.” Another slow grimace and his neighbor slumped to the ground. “I don’t think anyone will ever rebuild. Too many bones.” He nodded once at French as his eyes closed for the last time.
There was no shame in relief at knowing some of his family was safe. Underneath his folksy reserve beat the heart of a pragmatist, and he would not apologize for that quality, not that there was anyone left to hear such a confession. French grabbed the nearest horse that was alive and capable of listening, a sturdy appaloosa gelding flicking its ears back and forth in response to the sounds of fear and pain emanating from every corner of the valley. He did his best to calm the mount, and slung his two small cases over the saddle horn, before swinging himself up with the practiced ease of a lifelong rider. He took one last, cringing look at the citywide coffin that had been Asheville, vowed that he would avenge someone, somehow, and set off to the west. His mother had been a Bruxton, originally from the boot heel of Missouri, and her family had a colorful history, to put it mildly. She’d saved letters and accounts of his ancestors for pure entertainment, telling French that there must have been some heavy drinkers in her family tree in order to cook up the stories she’d heard as a child. West, then. Away from this place and, perhaps, to some semblance of my family, he thought, as the horse began to canter toward the setting sun. Through it all, French never shed a tear. That would come later.
With the sun nearly at rest, French Heavener ceased his woolgathering and walked to the Grange. As the relatively new military leader for New Madrid, his duties were needed at virtually every meeting that took place, with the exception of agricultural exchanges, and he even sat in on some of those, too. He needed to be aware of who was planting what, and how far they would be from the safer areas inside the defensive perimeter that the residents knew were mostly for show. In the event of a major breakout from Underneath, nothing short of a three-story steel wall would stop some of the beasts who’d come roaring out of the darkness over the years. Every twenty-five yards a guard tower was turned toward the gaping hole in the earth that filled their dreams with fear. Atop each, an experienced rifleman would sit during the three nights before each killing moon. During the off times, at least one soldier would stand watch, hoping against hope that dragons would appear. They remained disappointed.
The last dragon had winged toward the remains of Georg
ia nearly a year earlier. It wasn’t that they didn’t recognize the threat leering up from the earth; it was just that their instincts to go toward the coasts were more powerful than any other sensation in their draconic mind. Despite the protestations of their riders, the dragons insisted that they take the fight to where water met sand. On more than one of these leavings, the riders cast a long gaze of pity at the people of New Madrid. The rider’s eyes revealed what no one would say: the town was terminal, and the disease would bring about a painful end for everyone in range of the claws that were coming, month after month.
9
Dragons
“I mean, we sorta knew. I think that more than a few of us thought something bad was coming. I know that sounds stupid now, like there could be anything worse than the nine out of ten people on the planet dying or being eaten, but it was just this feeling. Asheville was like paradise compared to what we’d heard about. For the second time in two centuries, Atlanta and Charleston had been burned to the ground. Raleigh-Durham was—I don’t even want to talk about what I heard, but it was worse than cannibalism. As terrible as that sounded, I could at least understand the need to eat when your back’s against the wall and civilization is coming down around your ears every single second. And then the nights of no moon? Watching your family be cut to ribbons and swallowed by, by—demons, I guess. Early on, no one really knew what to call them, but then the usual religious nuts started screaming and suddenly, they didn’t sound so stupid anymore. Lots of people listened, but the truth was, even God wasn’t going to stand watch when those friggin’ howlers came up from basements and holes and wherever they could hide. It wasn’t just the end of the world, man. It was the end of the world in the worst way you could imagine. We ate fish from the rivers; it was one of the only ways to feed people, and there were lots of fish, big ones, so we returned to the old ways, sorta. People started seeing those freaky lice with eyes like people, and we were scared, yeah, but we just kept fishing. Just pluck those little horrors off of the fish, stomp them, and move on. Everybody knew, but nobody said anything, and then the monsters really came for us. For Asheville. For all of us. D’you know, only ten of us got out, one guy ahead of us, so, like eleven people in all? Out of a town of more than forty thousand? We struck west, anywhere away from the ruins, and the stink. The bones. I always wondered what happened to that whack job I saw on the river bank before the attack. I was militia, you know? A damned good shot. I saw those dead cows, their hooves stuck up in the air like they were waving at us, bodies tore all to hell. I held my rifle like it was a rosary, and waited. We all waited. The river area was deserted, except for us militia, and that lone fool shouting over the river, wearing a robe, all rusty and covered in dirt, waving his hands around like he was nuts. I never saw him again. We never saw Asheville again, either.”—Sara Lauterbrun
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