She kept walking, the gales shifting her back and forth. Dirt and sand kept hitting her in the face. She bent forward, trying to protect her eyes. Then she heard a creak, and the grinding of stone. She turned to see a nearby building lose a section of bricks, which came crashing down. The next gust knocked her right into the rubble pile. She looked up. Another round of bricks leaned and creaked, ready to plunge down on top of her. She leaped up and bolted toward safety.
She had to find shelter. The clouds moved in, rolling above her in a swirling mass, blotting out the sun. A bolt of lightning jagged out from their gray underbelly. She glanced around for a place where she could ride out the storm.
She ran down the street, stopping occasionally to make sure she was headed in the right direction. Then the rain let loose in another roar. Gargantuan drops pelted down, coalescing in streams along the street. The wind tore at her clothes, buffeting her back and sides. It threw her off balance, and she went down hard onto the rain-soaked asphalt. She staggered to her feet and looked down to see that her pants were soaked.
Nearby she saw a sewer opening that wasn’t clogged with debris. She reached it just as ice started careening down from the sky. The opening wasn’t wide, but she could fit. Sliding her feet in first, she squirmed through the hole, then dropped down a few feet, splashing into a shallow pool. She regained her balance, then pulled out her headlamp and switched it on. The beam played off a long, curved tunnel.
Ankle-deep water gushed by her in torrents as a noxious, rotting smell filled the air. She pulled her collar over her face to mask the stench, but it did little. Breathing through her mouth, she cast the headlamp’s beam up and down the tunnel, wondering if she should try to move underground or wait out the ice chunks.
She’d seen a few buildings a couple blocks down that looked more intact than the others near her, and decided she’d move toward them underground. Already the water in the tunnel had risen to her knees. She didn’t want to be trapped down here if the tunnel filled.
She sloshed toward the buildings, stepping over rusted pieces of metal and clumps of thick, gray slime whose origins she didn’t even want to ponder. About twenty feet in, she heard something splashing behind her. She spun, aiming her beam down the tunnel. She thought it might be ice coming in through the opening, so she stared hard in that direction. Then she saw a black shape, like the ones from last night. It drew in a sharp, hungry breath and loped toward her.
She ran.
Chapter12
H124 leaped through the water, banging her shin on a piece of submerged concrete. Behind her the splashing grew more insistent, and she knew she didn’t have much time. She had to reach the next opening. She tore on, now hearing more than one thing in pursuit. Daylight streamed in through another opening up ahead. She ran clumsily, vaulting over obstacles as they came, but so much debris choked the tunnel that she eventually tripped and pitched forward. Her hands caught the rough concrete walls of the tunnel, and she righted herself. She could hear the things hissing behind her, exhaling, now joined by a kind of ragged sigh. Ten more feet to the light. She plunged forward. She could see the opening, a circle in the tunnel’s ceiling, waiting for her atop a short steel ladder.
She grabbed the rungs and swung herself up.
The things hissed behind her.
As her head and shoulders burst upward, a chunk of ice collided with her arm. She let out a cry. She climbed all the way out of the dark hole and raced for the buildings. Another ice ball screamed down beside her, shattering on the asphalt. A second connected with her shoulder, and she cried out. She glanced back, spotting something dark sticking above the sewer opening. She continued to race onward, but when she looked back, whatever it was had retreated back into the tunnel.
She reached one of the more undamaged buildings, noticing that it didn’t have a door. She ran on to the next one, relieved to see it still had one. She wrenched it open, slammed it shut behind her, and drove a rusted bolt home. She could hear the ice pummeling the ceiling. She slumped down against the wall, wanting to laugh out loud. She caught her breath, wiping the rain out of her eyes. She pulled out her PRD, seeing how much ground she’d covered. She had to cover more distance today. If the Rovers had built the weather shelter system, maybe she could find some clue to their whereabouts when she reached it. Her body ached, but she had to keep going, at least until night, when those things might be out again. During the day it seemed like they kept to the dark. She hadn’t seen any topside while she’d been walking.
She stared down at the gray, featureless map of the PRD. Other than the blinking arrow, Willoughby’s PRD had no base map outside the city. Hers hadn’t had that either, and she wasn’t surprised. People had no reason to leave the city. More than a few times when she was younger, she’d pulled out her PRD and scrolled her city’s map beyond the edge of the atmospheric shield. Hers simply stopped and snapped back when she reached the perimeter.
Willoughby’s allowed her to scroll beyond New Atlantic, but the map showed no roads, no buildings, no markings at all.
She waited, listening to the ice pound on
