The Phoenix Trilogy (Book 1): World On Fire

by Scottie, Charles

  After several seconds of slow progress in the stifling dark, Natalie heard the sound of water rushing ahead, a feat that seemed strangely out of place down here. Everything already smelled foul, thanks to the legion of rotters that had been waiting below, but she guessed they must be entering the sewer systems beneath the city.

  A light clicked on and revealed Rico wearing a thin headlamp, along with confirming Natalie’s suspicions about their location. Quickly as he could, he offered a matching light to each member of the crew.

  While the lamps did give away their position, some kind of lighting was necessary in order to move forward. They were all standing just near the beginning of the freshly dug pathway where it merged into the sewer tunnel, and the group quickly moved around the corner to try and shade at least some of their light from the surface.

  Satisfied that they could see enough for now, BJ took the lead again. They weren’t headed anywhere in particular; ultimately, they needed to make it out of the sewers somewhere outside the camp where they might be able to regroup. If they were lucky, the massacre above them would keep the rest of the undead preoccupied enough to prevent them from returning home.

  It was taking all of Natalie’s willpower to prevent herself from thinking of the people that had been left behind. Since her time in camp, she had been forced to do many things under the justification of necessity, but this was by far the worst.

  A scream reverberated off of the walls around them, and Rico quietly reminded Natalie to turn on her noise-suppressant headgear, in case their guns became necessary again. Natalie shuddered, trying her best not to feel paranoid.

  All around them were offshoot pathways built into the sewers, more than one having been torn open by the tunnels that had been carved out by the diggers. With all of the chaos above them echoing down into their maze, it was impossible to tell where any of the noise was actually coming from. It felt as though they were surrounded on all sides by the howls of innocent people being torn apart, and Natalie feared she was going to lose her mind down there in the dark.

  For the briefest moment, Natalie believed her fear must have come true. The screaming, slavering madness that permeated the air was escalating into a roaring thunder that threatened to block out her thoughts even through her headgear, but the tunnels around them remained empty.

  Rough clattering was the only warning they had. Natalie was unable to turn in time to see what had happened, but she could hear the dull thud of body on body as one of the survivors of their group was tackled into the murky sewer water. The victim, whoever it was, had barely squeaked their surprise before being dragged under, and their group had suffered its first casualty.

  “Everyone, move!” With all of the other noises threatening to drown them out, Natalie was unable to pinpoint who it was that had spoken. The only thought that seemed to hold together in her head was the dull recognition that some of the walkers above were returning to the underground.

  There was no longer any need to worry about the sound of gunfire. Whether it was the panicked survivors screaming for their lives or the ravenous zombies howling for blood, any pretense of stealth had been abandoned. As such, the crew opened fire, picking off biters with brutal precision as the refugees continued their retreat.

  Even Natalie had begun putting her shotgun to deadly effect, splitting the skull of a would-be killer open like smashing a rotten pumpkin. She had resolved to protect Thomas, if no one else, and any ghoul that got near was either spattered across the tunnel wall or skewered through the eye on her prom-tip.

  The more blood she drew, the less fear consumed her heart, and Natalie steadily gave herself over to the thrill of combat. She had long since lost track of their location, not even paying attention to who else was still traveling in her party. A primal part of her was painfully aware of the fact that none of it would matter anyway if she wound up dead.

  Illuminating the path before her with her headlamp revealed BJ ushering Rico up a ladder, followed by Stephen and Lia. Casting a glance behind her revealed a very weary and filth-stained Marco, grimly nodding at Natalie before turning to address the crowd of zombies swelling behind him.

  They were on a thin walkway beside the sewer water, and as she took up position alongside Marco, Natalie was thankful that the biters were unable to escape the bottleneck without falling into the waste. They didn’t have to win this fight. They just had to buy enough time for everyone to make it up the ladder and out.

  “Marco, legs!” Natalie shouted the order between gunshots, but she had made her point. Rather than aiming for the head to put the ghouls down, taking shots at their legs caused a sizeable obstruction. While the zombies attempted to crawl, they were trampled, but their flailing arms caught in the legs of the dead above them. They were gaining ground, and quickly, but crippling was more efficient than killing.

  “We’re clear, fall back!” BJ had finished helping the remaining survivors climb out of the sewer, and returned his attention to saving his team. As Natalie and Marco were forced to raise their prom-tips to handle a walker that had broken out ahead of the pack, the hulking man sent it flying back into the pile with a heavy straight kick to its chest.

  Marco smacked Natalie’s shoulder hard, his not-so-subtle way of telling her to make a break for it. Following his lead, she sprinted to the ladder and began climbing as quickly as she could. BJ was right behind her, and as always, Marco brought up the rear. If things had been less dire, Natalie might have been surprised to recognize that she was worried about the man.

  A rough pair of hands gripped Natalie’s arm and yanked her out of the manhole. Rico was trying to get everyone clear of the sewer as quickly as possible, likely so he could seal the pipe with its cover and cut down on the noise spilling out from it.

  BJ was next, and to Natalie’s relief, Marco at last, Rico immediately manhandling the cap into place behind them. They were both filthy but appeared to be unharmed, though the same couldn’t be said of the rest of their party. Thomas and Stephen were both pale as sheets, but Lia was shaking her head, sobbing quietly. There were three others with them, whose names Natalie did not know, but one was bleeding badly. A bite, plain as day, already weeping on his arm.

  Grimly, Rico raised his weapon. They all knew what he meant to do, and though they each understood that the man was doomed, one of the other refugees stepped forward to defend him anyway. From the way she was crying, and the matching wedding rings on each of their hands, Natalie guessed she was his wife.

  “No, no no, wait. Just wait. I know he was bit, but look,” the woman revealed a series of fetid scratch marks running down one shoulder, “I’m infected too. Just let us go. We won’t come back. I swear we won’t.” She was sobbing now, and her husband was resting at her feet with a look of grave understanding on his face. He looked to Rico and, with the barest of nods, gave him the okay.

  There would be many times in the future when Natalie would remember the look on Rico’s face at that moment. It was a mix of such deep remorse and anger more powerful than anything she had ever experienced for herself. In one fluid motion, he plunged the tip of his rifle through the woman’s skull. At that same moment, Marco had performed a similar execution on the man who had consigned himself to death.

  Natalie was surprised at Marco’s action, and when she looked to see if Rico had intended for his cousin to join him in clearing the wounded, she saw a similar look of confusion on his face.

  “Your heart’s too good to be doing stuff like this, cuz. It ain’t your job.” Marco’s explanation was simple, and though he spoke almost condescendingly, his love for his cousin was obvious. He didn’t seem to care about killing people, that much was clear, but it appeared he drew the line at forcing his family to do the same.

  Somberly, the group picked a nearby building and agreed to rest there for the remainder of the day. It was a two story laundromat, and after quickly checking to ensure it was clear, they were able to effectively block off the stairs to the upper floor and make t
heir camp.

  Natalie couldn’t speak for the others, but everything felt hazy. Ensuring that the building was empty was a sloppy process, and she knew it. If there had been dead inside, they likely would have made a mistake, but their luck had returned to them. They were alone now, and suddenly very tired.

  No one spoke. In truth, Natalie couldn’t imagine there was anything to say. The outpost was probably gone, or at the very least, the refugees were dead. It was possible that others had gotten the same idea to use the tunnels, but Natalie didn’t think it likely.

  It was too much to process. Natalie had a bedroll in her pack, though she couldn’t find the will to unroll it. Marco was resting with Rico, his arm draped over his older cousin in a show of familial support. BJ was staring out the window at nothing, his eyes unfocused and his face haggard. Lia and Stephen were huddled together along with a bald, middle-aged stranger she didn’t recognize, and Thomas… Thomas was curled up in the corner of the room, his back to the rest of them.

  Part of Natalie wanted to comfort him. Being forced to relive this nightmare again was something she couldn’t imagine, but for all of her sympathy, she was finished. Not two steps into the room they were hiding in, she had collapsed to the ground, and she was content to stay here until morning.

  The afternoon sun still blazed cheerily, blissfully unaware of the massacre that had taken place. Natalie wanted to sleep, to just close her eyes and make everything go away, but closing her eyes only served to invite nightmare visions of what had happened.

  Almost as if she were in a dream, Natalie began to dig in her pack. My journal. I just need to distract myself. Write anything. Write anything… It wasn’t likely to help, but stewing in the strange, lethargic stew of apathy that she found herself in was making her feel worse.

  Every thought Natalie had was sluggish, and every few seconds she felt a burst of furious emotion welter in her chest before suddenly sputtering out as quickly as it had come. She felt like she was on the razor’s edge of having a meltdown; if there was anything that could bring her back from the brink, it was writing.

  With a heavy hand, Natalie put pen to paper and tried to come to terms with the reality of her day, the only noise to distract her coming from Lia’s strangled sobbing. Misery had never felt so overwhelming.

  Dear Journal.

  I’ve spent a long time staring at those two words. Frankly, I don’t really know what else to say. At this point, I’m just forcing myself to write because… what? I’m hoping it’s going to do something? Maybe it’s going to make me feel better?

  It isn’t. There’s no bringing those people back. Everything that happened, everything that went wrong, there’s no changing it.

  How many people do you think died, Journal? How many hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings just got snuffed out like candles on a birthday cake?

  It doesn’t matter, does it. I mean really, in the end, it doesn’t make a difference. So they died, big deal. We all die. Tons of people already have, long before this. It happens, especially these days.

  No, you know what, fuck that. I refuse to believe that.

  Those people would still be around if the military had listened to us instead of throwing us out. But no, we got ignored, and so everybody else had to pay the price while they fell back to their safe inner ring and hid.

  Shit, the bastards probably wanted this to happen. Think about it. Really put your mind to the grindstone and consider everything that led up to this.

  We had evidence, undeniable proof that things were going to get worse before they got better. That proof got buried under tons of bricks in an impossibly small time frame. Somehow, whoever did it managed to do it without making a ton of noise, which, now color me fucking suspicious here, I didn’t think was possible in the first place.

  So it had to have been set up ahead of time. There is no way, no fucking way, somebody could drop two medium-sized buildings down spur of the moment and not have it create a goddamn thunderous applause. It was done carefully, and since they didn’t have time for that, it was prepared ahead of time. Long before we got there.

  Somebody who was with Thomas, or Hell, maybe even Thomas himself, set all of that up for us to find. I would say the military might not have been involved, but I swear to God, they went above and beyond going out of their way to ignore everything we said.

  I know I’m being paranoid, but with everything that’s happened, it’s justified. I’m still not sure who to trust. I’ve thought about Thomas’ involvement with the whole thing, but I have a hard time believing he was a part of it now.

  At one point I was so paranoid about him that I spoke to Mejhit before the attack about his burns, and she said they were definitely real. After that, I started thinking about the role he played in everything, just to make sure he was safe to be around.

  I mean, he did lead us straight there, he gave us that information, but we’d also had reports of gunfire in the area that was bound to lead us to the corpse anyway. We didn’t need a guide.

  He could be a spy trying to keep an eye on things, but for who? Military already controlled the outpost and could put ears anywhere they needed without a problem, so they had no reason to bring in a new guy.

  There was no need to have someone spy on us directly either, because again, we got sidelined by the military anyway. They already had us on the trail to being vilified, so they had no reason to take an extra step there.

  If he worked for somebody outside the camp, he didn’t need us to get inside in the first place because the refugee area was open to everyone. We never gave him any special privileges.

  See where I’m going with this now?

  There was no advantage to be gained against anybody by getting Thomas involved. In fact, even though we got ignored, having his testimony about the diggers would only have helped us convince people that there was a real danger outside.

  If he is a bad guy, I can’t figure out what purpose he could possibly be serving. I think somebody in his group led them to that spot to die, and when he escaped, they didn’t care enough to finish the job.

  Which brings me to my next point. The weird confusion I’d had at the store where the digger’s body was? All that uncertainty about what happened and who had been there, I think I’ve got an answer. Or at least, the start to one.

  The whole thing was a setup, right? Humans led the group there, had them killed, and then left the body for us to find.

  I think they had biters involved, too, but they were controlling them. I don’t know how, but if humans were there to give orders, then maybe they made the undead go back underground before they could get to the corpse behind the counter.

  I’m not generally big on conspiracy theories, but it makes sense.

  What if they were killing two birds with one stone? What if, just like in the camp, they had the digger burst out followed by walkers, just to make sure it’d work?

  The humans in control confirmed that the creature worked, placed the trap for us by killing it and leaving the body behind, and then forced the zeds back into hiding until they needed them again.

  Not that any of this stuff matters if I’m right. The damage is already done, and we don’t have the resources to fight back against anybody, even if we did know who we were going up against. We’ve got nothing.

  Nobody has brought it up yet, but tomorrow we’re going to have to figure out what we want to do. My vote is on returning to the camp to look for survivors.

  It’s dangerous, sure, and probably a really stupid idea, but I don’t care. Those people got left behind to die, by us and by the soldiers who were supposed to be protecting them, and I’m not going to run away and never look back.

  It’s the least we can do, and if nothing else, I want to see if those fuckers from the inner ring survived. If they’re still back there, then they’re going to see that we made it out, too.

  Might not be the wisest idea, but fuck them. I want to know they’re going back to report to whoever is pull
ing all these strings to tell them that BJ’s crew is still kicking. Let ‘em stew on that for a while.

  This isn’t working. No matter what I say, I’m angry. I keep seeing all of the death, and I keep blaming everybody who fucked up. I don’t know that I can stop. I’m just going to sit here, rattling on about conspiracies, until I finally croak.

  I don’t even know how much I care about dying anymore. Might be a good break from all this garbage living.

  God, fuck all of this. I’m done.

  Sleep never did come to Natalie. Her night had been spent curled into a ball on her pack, eyes open but looking out at nothing in particular. The rest of her party had fared the same. Not a single word had been spoken since they arrived at their makeshift camp, and even though it was apparent that everyone was awake, Natalie was loath to break the silence. Instead, that duty fell to BJ.

  “I’m going back to the outpost. Anyone who wants to stay behind is more than welcome to.” As the giant finished his simple announcement, Natalie was already on her feet. Across from her, Marco and Rico had responded in kind. To her surprise, Thomas had as well.

  “Jessie, Stephen, and I will stay here and see what we can scavenge from the area.” Lia spoke next, and judging by matching looks of resolve from her two companions, they had already reached that decision amongst themselves.