J. Mitchell: Midnight City

Brilliant light pulsed outward in a powerful flash unlike anything a normal lantern could create. A bright, radiant sphere formed around Mira, wavering and flaring intently, filling the tunnel with its luminescence, burning bright.

Mira held it up like a shield.

In its intense light, the skittering shadows all around her were horribly revealed. Hundreds of them, stuck to the floors and walls, dripping off the ceiling, pulsing inside the doorways. Hulking, cancerous masses of goo, thick and black, like oil, constantly morphing and blending into new shapes.

Jaws of black teeth jutted out from their bodies, formed for the express purpose of collectively shrieking in pain. Mira held her ears, almost dropped the lantern as the sickening screeching that flooded the tight tunnel. The creatures withdrew from the powerful light, disappeared into darker rooms and hallways of the old station.

It was just as she had expected. A Fallout Swarm.

When the Assembly arrived on Earth, their ships were covered in billions of microorganisms carried from the vast reaches of space. Their reaction to exposure with Earth’s environment and atmosphere was to grow. Quickly. Within a year, they had become the huge, abhorant organisms they were now.

Globulous masses of putrid blackness that constantly changed shape and could form and dissolve eyes, maws, and other appendages as needed.

They were predatory to the extreme. Instead of the Assembly, the Fallout Swarms may well have overrun the Earth, if not for the fact that they found bright sources of light intolerably painful. Plus, they were attracted to sources of radiation; they seemed to live off it. Places like Clinton Station were natural homes for them, with its leftover radiation and its inherent darkness.

This Fallout Swarm had temporarily been pushed back by Mira’s artifact. It was a major artifact, from deeper into the Strange Lands, and she had traded for it in Midnight City long before she had been forced to flee, thinking she might one day need it for just such an adventure. It was one of the few things she could think of that might help her survive entering a Fallout Swarm lair.

So far, it was working. In the bright light, Mira could see from one end of the tunnel to the next. And there was no sign of the swarm.

Except for the clicking. The sounds of gnashing teeth, from hundreds of sources, all ticking and grinding and echoing everywhere.

The swarm may not have been visible… but it was nearby. Looking for its chance to get to her and rip her apart.

She rushed down the hall, looking for the door she wanted. She knew the lantern wouldn’t burn forever, She had to hurry. As she moved, the bright light pushed into and through each door she passed, followed by shrieks from inside as the Fallout Swarm twisted and crawled back into the dark. All around her, at the edge of the lantern light, the shadows writhed and fluctuated, following hungrily after her.

She found the door she was looking for and stepped quickly through it.

The room on the other side was immense, stretching high above her, most likely all the way to the surface. In the light, she could see crates of all kinds and shapes, stacked high off the floor, all sitting untouched and covered in dust.

It had been the power plant’s main storage area, as big as a warehouse, and it was what she was looking for.

A lift mechanism sat in the center of the room, directly underneath a large mechanical door in the “ceiling” above. Mira assumed it was used for bringing material to and from the surface.

The Fallout Swarm had made this room its main lair, it seemed. It was revoltingly, impossibly, densely covered with the black, oozing creatures, all swarming and contorting throughout the room, dripping from the walls, the ceiling, the floor.

When Mira’s pulsing lantern light entered, they emitted a collective shriek of pain and anger, swarmed up and away in a shuddering wave of blackness that receded into the shadows.

The clicking sounds were overpowering now, echoing everywhere. If the lantern were to fail… she wouldn’t last long.

Mira’s heart raced as she moved toward a series of stacked metallic crates. They were sturdy and solid, seemed to have weathered the years well. It was a good sign. She wiped the dust off one, revealing a circular symbol divided into six yellow and black triangles pointing at a black circle in the center.

In the World Before, it had meant radiation.

Mira’s relief and elation were enough to make her forget about the clicking sounds filling her ears, the swarming mass of blackness trying to get to her outside her light. It was what she had risked everything for. And she had found it.

One of the crates sat by itself, and she undid the locks on its front, yanked it open. Inside, completely dust-free, was a layer of black foam protectively holding half a dozen water-filled glass cylinders. The cylinders were full of slivers of a dull, brownish compound.

Mira smiled at the sight. She reached for one of the canisters and pulled it free of its foam. At the same time she took something else from her pack. A strange conglomeration of different, mundane items: dimes and quarters, a green marble, coiled copper wire, two triple-A batteries, and other things, all wrapped in gold chain and blue thread. It wasn’t big, Mira could hold the entire packet in her fist, and it was attached to a large watch band.

It was an artifact combination called a Dampener that she’d made before entering the dam. It would absorb all the radiation and heat the plutonium naturally gave off, making it safe to carry.

She quickly wrapped the band around the cylinder and tightened it. When the object touched the glass, there was a spark of light… and then a hum, like something electrical powering up. Mira felt the hair on her arms stand up at the charge.

When it was done, she held the cylinder up and studied it in the light from the lantern like a priceless treasure…

…just as the crates above her suddenly began to topple over.

In their fervor to reach her, some of the Fallout Swarm had climbed on top of the crates, shrieking and clicking, piling more and more of themselves on top of the stack… until it was too much.

The crates tumbled downward to the floor in a cascade, and Mira leapt away. She barely avoided them as they crashed down all around her, slamming into the floor and bursting apart.

Mira hit the ground hard and rolled away.

As she did, the lantern came loose, sliding away. It couldn’t break, but the flame on the wick snuffed out regardless.

The vital, protective light it offered died, and everything plunged to black.

The glass cylinder skittered out of her grasp, rolling into the shadows.

Mira stared around her as ghostly shrieks shouted out and filled the huge room with frightening power. But the shrieks weren’t ones of anger or pain this time. They were shrieks of glee.

Mira couldn’t see them, but she knew they were coming, heard their slithering bodies dragging themselves across the floor toward her.

“Well, crap…,” she said, and yanked her flashlight loose once again. The light it emitted was puny compared to the lantern: it barely lit anything around her. Two of the creatures lunged for her from the dark, and she shone it right at them. They withdrew a little ways. But there were more. Many more.

In the decayed beam from her flashlight, she saw the Fallout Swarm streaming down toward her from every direction, unafraid now, hungry, angry, obsessed. Teeth and jaws and writhing mouths formed and jutted out from their bodies, ready to tear her to shreds. The clicking and gnashing of teeth echoed everywhere.

Mira knew she was done for. Whatever she did, she was just stalling the inevitable. She didn’t feel fear now, just bitterness and frustration at having come so far and so close. Mira hated to fail more than anything, and she had failed gloriously here. She thought of goals unmet, promises she couldn’t keep, and her anger began to rise.