It had been days since our assault on the Screamer town, or Villa de los Trabajadores, whatever that meant. The Screamers seemed to be theTrabajadores or Trabs as we called them for short. Nobody who lived in the shelters could speak the same language as the Trab refugees and we only found one person in the markets who spoke it on top of their English. But their English wasn’t very strong to begin with and by the end of their conversation with the Trabs they didn’t really want to talk much to us about it unless we wanted to buy something. And we found that most of the things on sale at the market recently were all Screamer related from the spoils of conquest that the mercenaries had brought back. There had only been four of them coming back and I wondered if each one had something on them, perhaps a little trinket or bit from a body to keep as a personal prize for what they had accomplished. The world was bizarre for things like that and I really wanted nothing to do with it.

I also wanted very little to do with the Trabs. I didn’t feel any resentment towards them or anything; I just wasn’t concerned with them. My mind was now stuck on what to do, all the time, where to go and how to progress in this place now that we had cleared the tunnels. Roy was constantly suggesting trying to tap into the power lines in the tunnel to set up lights but was continuously reminded that the tunnel already had lights in it but no power was flowing along it for some reason.

And so I started to avoid the constant meetings and put in my time helping to clean up the ravaged Villa. While I did it absently I simply thought about what I should do. Who to talk to about potential cures or the spreading of the Black Pueblo into a salvation complex and what I should do about that stupid fucking hole in the wall. I was never quite looking for it anymore; I just knew it was along their somewhere, beckoning to me. And it irritated me.

Of all people to talk to I ended up in front of Giacomo’s door one of the days. He had been busy at work being brought in constant samples of old Screamer tech and being assigned tasks related to researching expansion methods or faster clean up tools or how to get power into the tunnel in between the two open spaces. I walked in on him standing in the middle of the room humming to himself and spinning in slow observational circles. He stopped when he saw me and stated something very odd, even for him.

“You are not Roy.”

“Are you expecting to see Roy?”

“No. So I will talk to you. Perhaps you will tell Roy. I think you should I’m just not sure how to do it.”

“No promises Giacomo. Keep in mind I still hate you so if you start gossiping now I won’t hesitate to murder you.”

“Spare me your death threats. I get enough each day. It isn’t exactly easy living with two of you inside your head you know. I will tell you this thing now anyways and you can find the way to tell it to Roy yourself then.”

“Fine, what is it?”

“When you brought me the mask I did my studies on it and found out from my old Pariah files given to me by Roy, alongside some of my physical materials here that-”

“Wait you knew that Roy was from the Pariahs?”

“Well yes he gave me the files after he got me transferred here. I was originally a prisoner working for the Pariahs research and Roy requested I be transferred here instead to aid him and then he gave me the files to do work.”

“I don’t know what he saw in you.”

Giacomo continued, ignoring my statement and subsequent glare. “That mask you brought me seemed to be constructed using a form of technology and style of construction very similar to what the Pariahs use. Now it also looked similar to a few other sources and could have been anything, plus it was only one sample. But now I have all this stuff coming in all the t-time and it l-l-looks like every-everything is m-matching up.” Giacomo’s voice broke down as his personality shifted. He spun around the room once and back to me and seemed to recognize me and remember what he was talking about before continuing. “I also studied some of the tissue samples and blood left behind on these items and have found the residue from neural enhancing drugs and narcotics, ones reserved only for Pariah soldiers, in the remains of the Screamer soldiers.”

“Your doctor is showing through Giacomo. So what do you think it all means then?”

“That the Screamer base was just another Pariah outpost. I think the Screamers were there first though the Pariahs bought them out by selling them weapons technology and combat drugs. They might have also given them access to food or water or all sorts of things to make them their subjects, similar to how they set up this base here, only they didn’t have to buy this one out. They used dictators here. It’s a marvellous system they have set up and very fascinating. Amidst all this ruination and chaos this force would use it as a chance to gain power by pitting the last factions of humanity, ones they created, against each other to keep them down while they can continue to grow and develop without resistance. I can only wonder what they’ll do when they hear about what you did to their system.”

I left Giacomo as he broke down into hysterical laughter. So we were all subjects to Pariah war games? They were the ones convincing the Screamers or Trabs or whatever to launch their Guerilla raids against us. The raids killed off Trabs and kept us in fear and the narcotics kept them addicted to combat and so on and so forth. For a post-apocalyptic world we certainly had a lot of secrets to live with. The Pariah I had talked to made it sound like Roy was oblivious to most of the inner workings of his ex-organization so I doubted he would have known that was what the Trabs were really doing. And while near every other secret I had learned I kept to myself, this one I thought I should bring out to Roy. Though I wasn’t sure why. It would be an interesting fact to learn but what would it actually do? I wondered why I would tell Roy the useless historical fact when I could be telling him the important present-changing facts about bacteria and holes. And I kept wondering it all as I told Roy the whole thing at the next meeting the very next day.

He nodded and mhmm’ed his way through the process until I was done. It didn’t take very long to explain at all as the few of us at these sorts of meetings just listened to me talk, except for me actually as I simply thought and thought and thought about the why behind me telling Roy all this. At the end of it there was brief silence while Roy continued to nod a little bit before shaking his head. “Well I suppose I thank Giacomo for his research but I can’t see much use to it now. The Pariahs aren’t big fans of ours already so when those fuckers come for our heads I’m not too concerned as to why they’re pissed at us, just how many I kill before I die.” Everyone else at the meeting gave a small clap for Roy, except for Fiona. She never did anything at the meetings other than sit and watch. That’s all I usually did too.

It wasn’t long after this meeting that another one was called and I had finally come to a decision. I wanted to go explore that stupid hole in the wall for days but still couldn’t bring myself to commit to it. So instead I proposed the next best thing: exploring the giant hole behind the door at the end of the Villa. I wanted to know if there was an opening beyond those doors or if perhaps it was just more track with more dangers at the end, like we had been. It was easy to get a general consensus at the meeting. Our numbers were low after everything that had happened and everyone else was curious too so majority votes were easy to come by. We also planned to try and move some refugees from the subway trains into shelters, but if you moved one family everyone would want to come and so on and I wasn’t really too too concerned with that at the moment. All I wanted was to keep exploring, as though I knew there was something right around the corner from me and yet it kept remaining behind doors and elusive vanishing holes.

The night before we set out for the door I lay down in bed and struggled to find the comfort of sleep. Once found though I slipped right into a near catatonic state, as is customary for most sleepers of the world. My dreams were of discoveries and foreign dangers and reminds of my past when I had gone exploring and ended up in the homes of zombies or bandits. One particular dream rose up and metamorphosed into a hideous nightmare that had me shaking softly in bed until my eyes burst open to escape from it.

I gasped in a lungful of air, partially from the nightmare and partially because I was not alone in the room. As I lay on my bed looking up I was staring at a face right above me. A white mask to be more specific, perhaps of porcelain like the old dolls. It had no eyes, just a little bump for a nose and a long red smile across the bottom. As I went to scream and thrash the figure above me rested a finger across my lips. The finger was icy cold and felt metallic and I looked down to see that I had the flat of a small blade pressed against my mouth to keep me quiet. With its other hand the person raised one blade-finger to their own lips in gesture for me to keep quiet. Then it took that same finger and brought it down to my open neck and I felt my body seize in fear. The blade’s sharp edged touched against my soft flesh and slowly slid across, drawing a red line along my neck. I felt my blood begin to flow out the cut with each pulse my heart took and my bed started to soak up my blood as it dripped out from my body.

The figure continued with its finger, bringing its face in close to mine and letting the tip of its dagger pass over my cheeks and nose, creating little scratches and nicks with the deft artful strokes of a masterful artist. Then it drew the blade up to my forehead and plunged it straight down, deep into my brain and I watched its smile grow and silent laughter emptied out from its haunting mask.  

I woke the next morning to find I had coughed up blood in the night over my chest. I wiped off most of it and decided to skip a shower when I saw the line up for the bathroom. I contemplated my dream, or perhaps nightmare, or maybe just pinnacle event of the night and clutched at my throat and rubbed my forehead a bit, remembering a knife driving through my brain. Was that the mysterious Stalker that had killed off so many people in the night without raising a single alarm? Or just a projection of my own fears of what was happening around me. Finally we were freeing the Pueblo and I was more concerned about my own life than ever before. I almost wanted out of here for a bit and for some air above. But I couldn’t. Not when we were about to go open up the door.

There was only myself and Roy going on this trip, with Fiona staying to watch over the Pueblo and Giacomo being told to sit and stay. Roy was fairly silent most of the way until a small Jose caught up with us, gasping and panting for breath and the mumbling something and not leaving us alone. Both of us tried to tell him to go back since he didn’t seem to be trying to tell us something and he simply stood there and stared at us. So we shrugged and moved forward, letting him tag along. It wouldn’t be the first time he had returned to his old town. He had come along with me a couple of times when I had gone for clean up. In fact he had seemed to attached himself to me whenever I left the subway station, whether it was to go to the market or to his old Villa, he seemed intent to follow me. Perhaps he picked up on my wandering past and thought I was going on an adventure every time I left my room. Maybe he just liked me because he knew I was why he lived.

His mother certainly didn’t feel the same. While she did take up accommodations with us she hardly spoke to anyone or gave them any eye contact, keeping very much to herself and not daring to ever go near her old village. Perhaps children forgave and forgot that much sooner, only to have it resurface as something hideous years later.

We came out into the light of the ruined battlefield, where a couple of people on clean up committed themselves to their duties and the rubble from our battle was pushed around. Most of it was being sorted into piles to be used later as we recognized that we really couldn’t save the town but we also didn’t want to just dump all those potential supplies into the river below. If anything was completely useless it was pushed over the edge and left to be carried down the river or to sink to the bottom. We weaved our way through the piles and wreckage to the other end of the tracks where the tunnel resumed momentarily before the door.

Roy went to the side and found the interior door switch, noting how it was in the same place ours was at the other end. With a deep breath he pushed the button and the doors began their grind to open. Jose stepped back behind me and poked around my hip as if expecting something awful to leap out from behind the door. And considering this was his door from his town he could have seen it open before and may have had good reason to fear it opening once more.

However all my fears were pushed to the back of my mind as visions of Stalkers waiting behind the door vanished when the door revealed only more tunnel. At the end of it this time we could see a light, similar to when we had first seen the Villa. We stepped forward into the tunnel but Jose stood to stay behind, not wishing to go any further outside of the tunnels he had grown up in. I pulled out my pistol, feeling comfort in it like I had in my old revolver. Roy didn’t have the sword with him this time, instead choosing to bring along a small firearm of his own. And I had opted to leave my Hound behind in my room once more. It had grown significantly now into something close to the size of a full adult and was better trained than Giacomo, though not by my hand. It had started to become a resident pet, drifting around between rooms and comforting those who played with it or fed it. Which I didn’t mind. I had thought at first of having some sort of sidekick to pal around the wastes with but now realized I was living out a life building this place with or without a Hound. It seemed to bring comfort to the others, especially Chris’ parents, who must have seen a piece of their son’s memory in the beast.

Roy and I continued down and the light at the end began to grow and reveal an apparent grey wall past the end of the tunnel. We continued getting closer only to see the grey wall come into focus, details growing until the wall looked to be formed of rock and earth. The end of the tracks came into view, the ends twisted and bent before being broken off completely. I looked over at Roy to see if he knew something about where we were but I found his face fixated on the end of the rails. He sprinted ahead to the edge of the tracks and I had to dash myself to try and keep up.

Roy grabbed at my pack as I skidded to a halt and nearly slipped over the edge of the tracks. I got a glimpse almost straight downward into the chasm below, the thinnest trickle of a tiny stream running between pebbles and stones. As Roy helped be me up I saw that on the other side of this chasm was the other half to the subway tunnel, split and broken like the end of our own tunnel, only this one was shifted down lower along the rock wall.

“Kill yourself now of kill yourself later. I’d prefer if you died at the hands of some horrible monster, not just a slip down a cliff. Now can you take a guess as to where we are?”

“The end of the line? Looks like the ground broke here at some point or another and now the subway is split in two.”

“And do you know of anywhere nearby where the earth splits like this?” Roy pointed down to the left and I followed his finger and took a look down this tiny canyon. I started spotting people moving amongst the rocks, more and more coming into my vision as I started paying more attention. It looked liked clusters and groups of humans sheltering down in this place but once they started to move I recognized them for what they were.

“This is the Ravine?!”

“It would seem so. Our great subway line, bastion of safety against the zombies, ends right in their homes. If anybody left that door open at anytime these things could wander in and kill us all. Those bastard Pariahs could have flipped a switch at any moment and let zombies run rampant. Son of a bitch!” Roy punched into the subway tunnel’s wall with a little less enthusiasm than the last time I had punched something, perhaps because he knew I had nearly broken my hand the last time I punched something and he was a little bit brighter than that.

While he stood with his fist pressed against the wall I took a look down to the right of the Ravine and found a very curious object sticking up in the middle of the fissure. It looked like a large pen with its pointed end sticking into the ground and its highest point fanning out with little wings around the cylinder. It was leaned against one of the rock walls and nearly blended in with its surroundings due to its grey paint. “Roy, what’s that over there?”

Roy glanced over his shoulder at the object, his eyes lighting up before he joined me on my side of the tunnel. “It looks like an old missile, undetonated or faulty or something.”

“What kind of missile?” I remembered back to my parents explanations of bombs and missiles, nuclear and explosive and hydrogen and lots of different forms of deadly bombardments that were used to destroy the world.

“We’ll have to find out.”

“You want me, someone who lived up in the wastes and whose number one rule was to avoid the Ravine, to crawl down into the Ravine to go look at something that could blow up at anytime.”

“We need to know about this thing. The Pariahs have probably used this door before and would know about this missile. They could detonate it anytime if they wanted to with it sitting right here and kill us all.”

“Then why wouldn’t they just move the missile so they could fire it at people?”

“If it’s an active bomb then they can’t risk even touching it the wrong way. Come on now you little fucking pansy.” Roy dropped down from the subway to a small outcropping, climbing and crawling down the rock until he was at the bottom. I followed in pursuit, struggling to hold my balance with only one arm fully functioning. I eventually found my way to the bottom and saw a chuckling Roy waiting for me.

“Shut up Roy, Giacomo did the best he could. At least he got the fucking bullet out of my arm. Hurt like a bitch though.”

“And it was one hell of a good laugh listening to you on the other side of the door. If we are done bantering, let’s go check out a deadly explosive weapon.” Roy took me to the bomb, signalling for me to place my hand on one part of it while he ducked down and inspected the upside-down tip of the rocket. He removed a small tool from his back pocket and immediately moved it under the missile and out of my vision. I heard whirring noises and then the grinding sound of metal being cut.

After unbearable moments of me holding the missile in balance and my arm getting tired, Roy popped back out with a grim look on his face. “I’m not an expert but it looks like it’s not only still active but it is also an undetonated nuclear warhead. And a fair-sized one. It could cause some serious damage within the next few miles, not to mention the radiation afterwards. That would set this whole place back a good five, maybe ten years.”

“I thought radiation lasted a really long time?”

“It can and it will but since the wars the general radiation levels around the world have increased and humans have adapted to it. We’re a little more immune to the stuff than before. I mean five to ten years down from fifteen to twenty is a big difference but it’s still a long time without being able to hang around here.”

A thought struck my mind as I stared down the emptiness of the Ravine towards where the zombies were roaming and the cold metal from the missile had begun seeping into my brain and affecting my thoughts. “But the Black Pueblo is just one big bomb shelter correct? Even if that bomb is right outside its door?”

“Well we’ve never been hit with a bomb directly but I guess it should...”

“Then what if we detonated the bomb, right here?”

“What are you fucking insane? You been standing out here in the cold too long? You can’t blow up a bomb right now. Didn’t I just tell you how the radiation alone would be deadly? Fuck you have to be kidding.”

“Why don’t we bring it to the meeting then and see how it goes?”

“Fuck you I’m not discussing this option. We need to disarm this bomb. Giacomo is the only one who could do such an act with his skills but he isn’t sensitive enough to. We need outside help on this one.”

“He could arm it to explode. Hell any of us could do that I’m sure. Think about it. We blow this thing, kill off half the zombies sitting in this hole and kill the other half with the radiation poisoning while we sit comfortably in our own little hole and the radiation keeps the Pariahs away for the next few years.”

“While we sit trapped in and die from starvation? Come on man think it through.”

“We could buy radiation suits from the Market!”

“There wouldn’t be any fucking market. If nobody can leave or get in the market will dry up. That’s how it works. Get these fucking ideas out of your head, get it together and I’ll help you get back to the subway. If I recall you only have one arm for climbing so you’re going to need me to go back up the other way and you piss me off I’ll gladly leave you here for the zombies.”

“Fuck off Roy, let’s just go on then.” With assistance I got back to the subway and follow Roy with my head down all the way back to my room where I promptly locked myself away for the night. I came out the next day to find a circle composed of the remaining residents of the Black Pueblo. We were down to about half from when I first arrived, maybe less. I hadn’t taken exact head counts so I wasn’t quite sure. They looked at me as I walked out, each one wearing a solemn empty expression, similar to the one Fiona carried with her every day.

Roy looked over at me and nodded towards an empty spot in the circle, signalling that I needed to take my place. “We are discussing the warhead, No-name, something you had a large issue with?”

I grimaced at Roy for the intentions he exposed to me but chose not to back down from such a challenge. “I suggest detonating the warhead to kill the zombies in the Ravine and to protect us with radiation for the next while.”

Nobody gasped. Nobody looked surprised or shocked or provoked or in thought or amused or anything. It appeared that Roy had already explained all this to the entire group and had probably already convinced them out of it. “I see Roy already told you my idea. I assume he has already convinced you away from the idea of it. Then what is the point?”

“The point is a decision.” Roy stepped forth from the group into the middle of the circle. “And we have reached one regardless of your input. We will disarm the bomb, dismantle it, and store it safely for the rest of our time here. You can either stick with our decision or leave as you wish.”

“So my wishes or ideas will not be respected by the current group? I see.”

“If nobody in the group wants to respect it then no. You are the last one among us to come from the surface. Your memories of survival of the fittest should be the freshest.”

“Then you’re making the choice for me I suppose. Nice knowing all you.”

“I’m sure it was.” With that the group stepped away from me, leaving me to return to my room and collect my things. I didn’t need much other than a couple of snack supplies and ammunitions. This is how I had arrived and survived for so many years and it was how I would return. It’s too bad I would be lacking my favoured revolver but I liked the option of stabbing with my pistol as much as I liked shooting with it.

I held my teleporter up in front of me, checking its full charge and unlocking it for use. I pressed down to warm it up, feeling its warmth spreading in an almost foreign sense. I had not pre-charged my teleporter in quite some time, my last use being sporadic and forced and not planned at all. I enjoyed the sensation for a moment and the idea of disappearing from my current location to reappear anywhere within this city that still had some power and a stand for me. As I used to do before coming to the Black Pueblo, I held my pistol pointed out in front of me in preparation for anything on the other side.

“Good-bye Black Pueblo, let us meet again someday.”

And I squeezed my fingers down into my palm and triggered the teleporter, still wondering how I had not managed to find the other half of the device in my entire time down here. My room vanished, fading away and swirling around into a blur of colours and particles until they rearranged themselves in front of me and formed into an empty street of dead buildings and broken down cars. And in front of me stood a familiar painted mask, worn across the face of someone who held up their hands, each finger composed of small blades rather than skin and bone.

Before I could react or even gasp those terrible fingers plunged down into my stomach, shredding through my interior with ease. And in the corner of my eye I saw a brilliant light erupt in the sky, rising up into the horizon and spreading out towards me. Somehow the painted mask in front of me seemed to smile at this more than it truly could as an extreme heat wave washed over me and flayed the skin off of the being before me until their whole body was blown apart. And mine joined it, pulling itself apart until the pieces could no longer keep themselves together and I broke up through the air.

I collapsed onto the street below me, feeling like I had fallen a couple of feet coming out of the teleportation. The air rushed...from my body...and I struggled. To get back up to my. Feet. The images of the Stalker and the light faded from my mind while I resumed a standing position. My arm was throbbing and at a level of pain similar to when I had first been shot.

Cradling my arm and looking around I found myself in a new section of the city, a business area of half-standing skyscrapers with ancient factories scattered throughout along the street. There were only two buildings almost completely wholly standing: one was a large skyscraper of maybe eighty floors that, other than shattered windows, was intact, at least on this side of it, and the other looked like a factory tucked between two goliath skyscrapers that must have sheltered it from the bomb blasts. But I could not find the source of my teleportation, the stand that had directed my machine to this location.

As I looked for it I thought of the strange vision I had encountered along the way, something that had never happened before. Never before had I ever seen anything more than the shifting sands of reality when I dematerialized and when I came out the world may have been hazy often, yes, but it was never a hallucination or foresight or whatever the hell it was that I had seen or hadn’t seen or come close to seeing or however it is you describe an event that you have never experienced before, other than one time in a dream, though I hardly considered dreams to be on the same line as random visions during teleportation.

I still could not find the stand around me anywhere on the ground nearby or in the building behind me, looking up to the sky for answers. And finding them.

The stand was hanging out the window of the building a couple floors above me, the only thing keeping it from falling was its power cord. But it implied that some of the buildings nearby at least had power flowing to them, more or less, even on higher floors. It also explained while it felt like I had fallen to the ground when I arrived. I had gotten lucky that the technology behind teleportation was not flawless and I was teleported in a little bit lower than the stand. Much better than being teleported a little bit higher than the stand and landing with a broken leg or two.

I shook my head at the stand above me and heard the click of some form of gun cocking behind me. My body tensed in preparation while my mind sighed since a loaded gun at least meant I could talk them down rather than simply getting eaten by a zombie behind me.

“I don’t have time for talking Burke. I’m going to kill him.” The voice was almost rusty in its sound, the organs used for producing it worn down to their last little bits.

Shit, I thought. I liked talking people down, and I didn’t like zombies but would put up with them but the thing I hated the most were people with guns who didn’t want to be talked down and thought they had somewhere to go and something to do. There was a little dot of heat pulsing on my lower back and slowly growing larger and hotter. Fuck me. I had a new category to add to my list of things I hated to be surprised by and that was people with energy weapons.