A Story of Cinders: From the Ashes

Chapter 43: Yesterday

     Soon, they had entered Ground Zero. The rocky hills became stony rubble. The burned tree stumps became hollow, scorched facades. Gnarled, twisted steel beams jutted precariously outward from the higher floors, almost ready to fall onto the cracked streets below. The entire ruin was covered in a thick layer of ash, turning any flat surface a powdery gray. The silence they felt in the burned forest had returned with a palpable tension. John felt it. They all felt it. Even Louis stirred in his sleep.

"Think we can hide in any of these buildings?" John asked, hoping to distract himself. Nobody responded. Okay then... Charlie was staring at the buildings, trying to figure out what they were. Where they could set up camp. He looked at the tallest one. Plain gray face, symmetric windows spaced evenly across and up, the silhouette of the letter "W" engrained against the side near the roof, the giant letter itself in pieces on the ground below. Before the Day of Fire, it was a banking building. That wouldn't do. The whole place was structurally unsound. A slight shift in weight, and the whole building might fall on top of them. The next building had one massive glass wall with two sets of double glass doors next to each other. Inside, broken escalators crossed each other all the way to the top. This was a shopping mall. Structurally sound? Probably, but it was too open. They would be found by the soldiers quickly, and it wasn't highly defensible. That wouldn't work either.

"Nowhere downtown would work," Charlie said. "They'd be looking for us here, and none of these buildings could hold us safely without compromising our position. We have to find somewhere else." He poured some whiskey on his shoulder, groaning in pain and taking another pull from the bottle.

"I don't suppose you'd have somewhere else in mind, would you?" John asked rhetorically.

Charlie paused for a second before speaking. "Let's head east and see if there's anything there." He pulled out a compass from his jacket pocket and placed it on the dashboard. "East is straight ahead."

"Better than anything I've got I suppose..." John muttered, continuing his route. He drove forward until the road ended, then turned right, looking for another road heading east. Charlie saw a sign laying on the ground on one of the corners. The letters "ague" were visible on the green metal sticking out of the ash. "Left here," Charlie said. "I think this one will take us out far enough." John turned left.

Then quickly veers right, avoiding the transport in the middle of the road. He stomps on the accelerator. In the mirror, he watches the transport kick to life, flinging a cloud of ash into the air as it pulls a u-turn.

"Oi! What's goin' on out there?" Red yells, bracing herself against the benches in the back.

"Look for yourself!" Charlie screams, reaching for John's M4. Red peeks her head out of the tarp opening. She quickly opened fire at the transport behind them. "How'd they find us?" She shouts.

"Shit luck, I'd guess," John says over the sound of Charlie's gunfire. Surprisingly, Charlie isn't cursing. He is silent and intense.

"Pull over," Charlie says, setting down John's M4. "We can't let them know which direction we're headed." He pulls out his revolver and reloads it as John pulls the car to the side. "On the count of three," John shouts. Charlie spins the cylinder into place. John and Red put in fresh magazines. They take a deep breath. John shuts his eyes, calming himself. Silencing the ghosts.

"Three."

All three jump out of the truck with their weapons raised. They stare at the faceless tin soldiers. One of them barks something in Russian. Charlie shoots before the soldiers have the chance. The .44 booms through the skeleton of the city, shaking the bare steel bones. The soldiers shoot back a volley of lead. A bullet bounces off Charlie's chest armor. Another skims Red's head. She flinches, reaching for her temple, returning fire at the soldiers. Another one hits the magazine in John's rifle. It fell out as John fires off the round in the chamber. He quickly drops the rifle and draws his pistol. He shoots at one soldier until he finally cracks their armor. Charlie takes one another soldier down, but misses three times. He rolls his shoulder in pain. Red takes down one soldier through their armor, and shoots off three more rounds until her gun clicks. By the time they all run out of ammo, there are still three more soldiers. They holster their guns and pull out their blades, ready for combat. The Zhar-Ptitsa soldiers' guns click. They go to reload. Then they all stop.

It's a lull in the action. This graveyard should be silent. No shooting, no speaking, nothing. Yet, there is a sound. Like white noise. A sort of murmuring and shuffling around them, followed by another low, forced airy sound. Almost a wheeze. They all look at each other, making sure they are not going insane. "What the fuck," Charlie quietly whispers to himself. They hear a groan coming from the façade to the north. Their eyes dart in that direction. In the shadows, they see it. The eyes. Floating yellow orbs, dancing up and down like will-o-wisps, drawing ever closer. Across the threshold of the shadows.

Louis was right. The Charred are real.