J. Mitchell - Midnight City

“When can I ride the Max?” Zoey asked. “I’m not too big for it.”

Holt and Mira shook their heads as they followed after the dog.

LONG AFTER HOLT HAD left, new shapes emerged from the tree line and climbed the same ridge that overlooked the expansive river valley. Initially, the only sign of their presence was a shimmering in the air, a slight wavering of light not unlike Mira’s Shroud artifact.

If you weren’t looking for it, you would never see it.

When the shapes reached the top, their invisibility shields deactivated and dropped away, revealing them for what they were.

Ten Assembly walkers, unique from any seen so far. Eight feet tall at most. Tripods, three legs, smaller, lighter, less heavily armed, built for speed and agility, not strength. But clearly deadly nonetheless. Their feet, which came to sinister sharp points, punctured the soft soil as they moved.

They were Hunters. And most strikingly, they were not blue and white… or even red. Their bodies were colored green and orange.

One of them moved forward, its body painted differently from the others. Its markings were sharper, more bold, more commanding. The other machines watched it with full attention.

The walker scanned the environment, its optics whirring as they did. Eventually, it found what it was looking for. A tangle of cut rope left on the ground. Evidence of its quarry.

Explosions flared up to the north, the sounds of plasma fire. The machine looked toward the distance and the bevy of red Assembly scouring the river valley below.

A flight of blue and white Raptors was strafing the red walkers. The reds were returning fire. One of the gunships exploded in sparks, spun out of control, and crashed to the ground in a trail of flame.

The green and orange Hunter emitted a strange, distorted trumpeting sound as it watched the fighting below. The sounds seemed… disdainful. The others echoed the sentiment, trumpeting electronically in response.

The walker watched the distant firefight a few moments longer.

Then it bounded off toward the west, following the path set by Holt and the others. The rest of the walkers followed without hesitation. They vanished as they moved, their cloaking shields activating and consuming them, concealing them from sight.

IT WAS A SUNKEN LANDSCAPE. What had once been a simple river was now an endlessly stretching cesspool of blackish water that stretched as far as the eye could see. The trunks of rotting, dead trees poked up from where they had been submerged and drowned years ago.

Cliff faces of sheer, sharp rock hugged the water on either side, making walking on anything dry impossible, unless you wanted to climb the cliffs and shimmy along the sides. Not the best option.

Holt, Mira, Zoey, and Max moved slowly through the Drowning Plains, sweating under the bright afternoon sun above. Of course, moved was only occasionally accurate. At times, the floodwater was so deep, it climbed past their waists, and walking gave way to swimming.

Right now, Holt was only up to his knees. Still, what was shallow for him was deep for Zoey. She would have been up to her neck if he wasn’t carrying her on his back.

Max swam through the waters with abandon. He’d been treading water all afternoon, but didn’t seem the slightest bit tired. Holt kept a watch on him nonetheless. The dog had a habit of tiring himself out with his enthusiasm, and this would be a very bad place for him to suddenly pass out.

Unsurprisingly, one person who wasn’t enjoying it was Mira, at the back of the line. Since they had first plopped their feet into the water, the complaints had been almost nonstop. The water was cold. The water was dirty. The water was in her shoes. The water smelled bad.

And then there were the snakes.

Holt had anticipated them. Mira had not. The first time she saw one slither through the surface, she’d screamed and almost pulled him face-first into the water in a frantic attempt to get away.

Each snake they saw meant a delay of ten minutes or more as Holt tried to convince her to start plodding forward again, in spite of his assurances that they were harmless (which was not at all true; water moccasins were not only aggressive but venomous as well, but that wasn’t something Holt felt Mira needed to know). Now when Holt saw the snakes, he kept it to himself.

For the last half hour they’d been seeing, in Holt’s opinion, something much worse than snakes. Evidence of fallen civilization was becoming more and more apparent.

Sunken cars, telephone poles jutting up from the water, floating debris of all kinds… including backpacks, clothes, shoes, and other evidence that many people had tried to make it through this route and didn’t succeed.

But there was no indication to suggest what might have stopped them. At least not yet. It would suit Holt just fine if that particular mystery remained unsolved.

They were also seeing more buildings. Or what was left of them, crumbling in the floodwater. Gas stations, motels, old diners, all partly submerged and jutting out from the glassy black surface. The buildings and the telephone poles that flanked Holt on either side suggested they were on what used to be a road. It also meant, as the buildings became more prevalent, that they were moving toward city ruins of some sort.

Holt wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

He felt Zoey’s grip on his neck start to loosen, could feel her forehead buried in his neck.

“Kiddo,” Holt said behind him. “No falling asleep, you’ll land right in the water.”

“I’m tired,” Zoey said with a pout.

“You’re not the one carrying somebody else. Maybe you should try carrying me for a while. Or Mira.”

“Yes. Please,” Mira said testily behind them. “How much longer do we have to do this?”

“Until we find someplace safe,” Holt replied. “Or until you don’t complain for five whole minutes, whichever comes first. My money’s on the former.”

“I’ll give you something to complain about,” she mumbled behind him.

“Will we be at Midnight City tonight?” Zoey asked.

Holt almost laughed. Midnight City would have been days away if the reds hadn’t sealed off the river valley. Now, forced to maneuver through the Drowning Plains… it was a much more distant goal.

Zoey was welcome to go to Midnight City; it just wasn’t going to be with him. If they made it through the Drowning Plains, they’d be back along the Mississippi, and could find one of the floating trading posts. He’d get rid of Zoey there and leave this whole mess behind him.

But at the thought, Holt felt those same stirrings of guilt, and it angered him all over again. He’d be doing what he had to do by leaving Zoey. And besides, she’d be in a better position to survive with a River Rat crew. There was safety in numbers.

But Holt knew that wasn’t exactly the case. He’d remained on his own for so long precisely because he believed he was safer that way. And whomever he handed Zoey off to would have no idea of the threat she brought with her. They’d likely be caught unprepared when the full force of the Assembly finally tracked her down. But… would she be any safer with him?

The truth was far more simple than any of that, though. He liked Mira. He liked Zoey. As much as he valued his independence and his isolation… their presence had shown him it came at a cost. There was an emptiness inside him he was rarely aware of, a hollow feeling he thought he had suppressed. Being with them these past few days had begun its excavation.

A part of him wanted to get the ordeal over with as fast as possible, so he could rebury it. Another part… wanted to dig it free and pull it back into the light.