Young Writers Society

“We’ve got a heat signature!” Dameon called into his communicator. “Six o’clock and twenty, five hundred meters.”

“Acknowledged. I am finding a place to land,” called Meghan, the team’s young pilot, over the intercom. Her Chinese accent lent an irregular cadence to her words.

“Got the first aid kit, Matt?” Matt Roberts, the other member of Dameon’s retrieval team, was sliding his stun gun into his holster.

“Sure thing,” he said, holding it up and grinning, blue eyes impatient beneath blond hair.

“Just remember, this is New York. Be ready for anything, and make sure you take your antirads. The fall was five hours ago, but the radiation messes with the dispersion, so be careful with your omicron readings.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Matt said, rolling his eyes. Matt was nominally head of the team, but was laid back enough he took Dameon’s reminders in good humor.
Dameon checked the heat radar again. The lone figure on the infrared was small and slight, either a woman or a young boy. He/she had fallen through close to the center of New York, or at least that was where the anomaly had registered. They must have walked two miles, probably looking for shelter. Now, they were crouched inside a half-standing building, waiting. For what, Dameon didn’t know.

“Landing now,” Meghan said. “Ready, team?”

Dameon could imagine her shy, flushed grin as she flipped switches to turn the hoverjet to “hover” mode and eased down on the yoke. “Ready,” he called, moving to position himself by the door. Matt mirrored him.

Team. Dameon laughed to himself. By FBI standards back home, this wasn’t a team. Meghan couldn’t hit a target if it was more than two feet away from her, and Matt was too easygoing to provide the sort of leadership and unilateral decision-making essential to life-or-death decision-making. But Dameon wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d gotten out of there for a reason.

Dameon let his hand drift to his stun gun. Truth be told, he was excited. New York had been hit by an enhanced nuclear bomb back in ‘25, enhanced meaning a little biological warfare in addition to the sheer destruction the explosion brought. Add a little radiation to the biochemical stuff and let it stew in a metal wasteland for twenty-five years, and, well, nobody wanted to go close enough to get a good look at the sort of things that had been breeding in there. New York was lethal enough that the fallen who landed there had a top-priority response rate. Despite an average rescue time of ten hours, they estimated they only managed to save about half of those unlucky fallen.

A soft thud that resonated through the walls of the hoverjet was the only indication they had landed until the door swung open. Dameon and Matt glanced at each other, donned their air filters, and crept down the ramp, stun guns primed and ready. It might have been Dameon’s imagination, but the rank air seemed to prick at his face, as if chemicals were already eating their way through his skin. But the air wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, at least not for a few hours, and he was mostly covered by his biohazard gear, which would protect him. He hoped.

“Where’s the target?” Matt hissed over the communicator. “Let’s grab him and get out of here before anything smells us.”

“Single-story building on your left,” Dameon muttered. “And let’s keep it down. Stuff here can hear too.” At least, if the stories were true.

Meghan had landed on the flattest patch of ground she could find, the top of a small plateau that might have once been a plaza. They picked their way through the rubble that coated the ground, much of it so twisted and charred that the only thing Dameon could guess was whether it was metal or concrete. Raised bumps, bubbles of gas that had burst in the bomb’s intense wave of heat, pockmarked each piece of rubble.

Before Dameon had arrived in Dimension 32, he had only seen pictures of the devastation an atomic bomb could cause. They had after all only been used twice, and both cities had been rebuilt for decades. Here, more half a dozen cities throughout the world were covered in rubble just like this, and that hadn’t even been the deadliest killer of humanity in the last hundred years.

“What’s our approach this time?” Dameon asked Matt, to get his mind off of what something that could do that to cement could do to human skin.

“Play up the rescue aspect,” he responded immediately, skirting the edge of a puddle whose water was probably acid. “No way for us to look completely non-threatening with this gear. Tell him the truth — if he stays here, he’s got radiation sickness in in a day. He’s dead in two days, especially if he drinks anything. Don’t mention the monsters, though. He probably won’t believe — “

Matt’s words were cut off as a gust of wind whistled between the buildings, carrying with it the sound of… something… sliding over the ground, mixed with a sound like leaves — or limbs — rustling. They froze.

Meghan broke in, voice high and shaky. “I was monitoring the infrared, Matt. There’s something out there, something big!”

“Meghan,” Dameon interrupted, soft but sharp. “Position and heading, now.”
“West, thirty degrees, behind that high-rise. You’ll hurry?”

“If we have to shoot them and carry them back, we’ll do it,” he said.

“Move out,” Matt ordered. “Keep us updated, Meghan.” He beckoned Dameon to follow him down a sheltered route around to the hole where the door of the building used to be. Judging by the twisted lumps of metal, it had probably been a gas station once, but now half the roof was gone and so were the doors and windows. A mess of brightly colored plastic hung dangerously at the top of the structure.

“Holster the gun,” Matt said as they approached the entrance.

Dameon’s hand twitched. It was just a stun gun. They didn’t even know if it worked on whatever monstrosity was lurking, and pointing a gun at a terrified fallen was not the best way to get them to trust you. As Dameon had pointed out, they could stun the person and take them if needed, but it was hard to trust people trying to explain to you the world you’d fallen into if they had just kidnapped you at gunpoint. In normal rescues, retrieval teams didn’t even unholster their guns unless they were directly threatened. But Dameon hated feeling threatened without a gun in hand.

Matt shot a pointed glance at Dameon as he eased around the corner, calling out “Hello?”

Reluctantly, Dameon obeyed the order, but kept his hand near the grip of the gun as he followed Matt into the building.

“We’re rescuers,” Matt called. “We detected that you had arrived, and we’re here to take you somewhere safe.”

There. Huddling behind a large piece of rubble at the back corner of the store, a flash of blue jeans. Dameon gestured, and Matt nodded.

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Dameon said, taking another step towards the corner. “You can probably tell the air is acidic. If we don’t get you out of here, it’s going to start burning your skin in a few hours. We have food and a transport. We’ll take you to our city.”

A face peered around the edge of the rubble. “I just want to go home. Can you send me home?” It was a young woman. She looked Hispanic, with long, glossy hair, and she sounded like she’d been crying. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

“We’ll do what we can,” Matt said. Dameon shot a glance at him. Don’t lie to her. Even if it calmed her now, at some point she would have to be told the truth just like Dameon had been: that there was no way back to a higher dimension. This was it. Rock bottom.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked, voice quavering.
He wished Meghan were here. Two strange men approaching her in a place like this? He would have been afraid too, and Meghan had always been good at connecting with these sorts of girls. Normally Meghan would come with them, but in New York it was too important to keep the hoverjet running. Plus she didn’t have the nerve for this sort of thing anyway.

“Trusting us is better than staying here,” Matt said. “It already hurts to breathe, doesn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Matt,” Meghan broke in, almost on cue.

“Not now,” Dameon muttered.

“But Dameon, the creature!”

Matt was within a yard of the girl now, holding out his hand in a silent invitation. A moment passed. Then she took his hand.

“The creature!” Meghan cried in Dameon’s ear. “It is right outside of the building! I’ve been trying to tell you — “

A roar sounded just outside. Deep and guttural, with a raspy edge.

“We’ve gotta go.” Matt heaved the girl up, supporting her with one arm over his shoulder when she staggered. “Step where I step,” he told her. “Be careful of the puddles.”

“Other exits?” Dameon said curtly. The girl shook her head, face pale.

“I’m point,” Dameon said to Matt. “I distract it, you take her.”

Without waiting for Matt’s permission, he drew his gun and charged through the door. At first, he couldn’t see anything, just rubble. Then it pounced
.
A blur of mottled gray shot past Dameon. He jumped out of the way only just in time, and the thing barely missed him, sprawling in a heap of limbs behind him, but scrambling to its feet before Dameon could shoot it.

It leered at him, a mutant dog with a squat snout and lanky, horribly misshapen legs. Its patchy fur bristled and its bare skin was pockmarked with angry, weeping sores. It stretched to Dameon’s shoulder, bared teeth growling nearly at eye level with him.

It crouched to spring again, and Dameon shot it in the head.

The thing flinched back with a whimper, but only for a moment before lunging at him. Dameon turned and ran, scrambling up a pile of rubble as he flicked through the radometer on the gun. Damn. Why hadn’t he had it on the highest setting in the first place? He was getting soft.

He turned and shot it again. It stiffened all over as the tight beam of radiation hit it and fell to the ground, writhing in pain.

Dameon vaulted over the creature and landed on the ground at a run, scanning the area to find Matt. He and the girl had made it around the corner of the store and were easing around a large puddle, only a hundred meters from the hoverjet.

But the yelps from behind were turning to growls and their pace was painfully slow. The heat gun was just making the thing mad. With those long limbs, that thing was fast. They weren’t going to make it, and next time he shot the thing it would probably push through the pain in its fury and lust for the kill.

He changed course, swerving right to go around the other side of the store. Behind him, he heard the mutant’s feet slapping against the stone. The sound was rapidly growing louder.

“Heat gun just makes it mad. Leading it the long way,” Dameon said between labored breaths. “Get her onboard and be ready to close the hatch when I come through.”

A hard metal object pressed against Dameon’s skin underneath the hazmat suit. His secret, one he hadn’t been able to stop himself from bringing, even though it was definitely illegal. Did he dare use it? He threw a glance back. Yes, it was following him and not Matt. Good.

Around the building. Dameon focused on the ground, trying to keep his balance despite the treacherous footing, but when he rounded the corner, putting him on the rear side of the building, he glanced up.

He was running into a dead end. The alleyway ended in a five foot wall, the side of the plaza where the hoverjet was. He had thought the land would slope down like it did on the other side. He had been wrong.

Normally, the pockmarked wall would have been a breeze to climb, but not when a two hundred pound monstrosity was on his tail. A sharp bark pounded through Dameon and a gust of rank breath was hot on his neck, spurring him to an extra burst of speed. He actually gained a few yards on the creature.

He glanced back. It was loping along easily. It knew he was trapped. The thing was playing with him, tongue lolling out of its mouth, enjoying the chase.
Well, he wasn’t down just yet. Dameon’s heart beat even faster. At the same time, a thrill swept through him, the mad joy of that balance between life and death. He had seconds left. Two hundred feet. One fifty.

He squinted, craning to see over the top of the plaza. Matt was just emerging from the hover jet, gun out, running towards the edge. “We’ll shoot at the same time,” Matt communicator over the intercom, panic in his voice.

“Timing… impossible,” Dameon gasped.

“Do you have a better solution!”

He did. Matt would see his secret, but there was no other option. It was shoot or be killed.

Dameon ripped his hazmat suit open and plunged his hand into an inner pocket of the jacket he wore underneath. His fingers closed on the barrel of a .22 pistol. His secret weapon. Literally.

The wall. He leapt, spinning in the air to slam against it with his back against the stone. It jarred the breath from him, nearly knocking the gun from his hand, but he seized his right hand with his left and steadied himself long enough to aim and shoot.

With a crack, the bullet drilled directly into the forehead of the beast, three feet from Dameon.

The mass of the brute slammed into Dameon a second later. The thing had died instantly, but that didn’t erase its momentum. Fresh pain exploded in his side, with an audible creak from his ribs. Dameon nearly gagged, both from the stench and from having the wind knocked out of him twice in about five seconds.

A ragged gasp, then another, a mad scramble to get that thing off him and breathe — and then his lungs filled again and the moment of panic was past. The mutant collapsed in a heap at Dameon’s feet. He leaned back against the wall for support, his ribs still on fire.

“You killed it!” Matt said, shock in his voice. “I thought you were…”

“What happened?” Meghan broke in, “I heard a bang! Please tell me! Dameon, are you okay?”

“Alive, for now,” Dameon gasped.

Matt was crouching at the top of the wall now. He gave Dameon a very pointed look, gaze sliding to the gun in Dameon’s hand.”

“I know,” Dameon mouthed at Matt. “I can explain.”

Well, not really. It was a black market gun. His only reason for having it was that no matter what kind of government you had or how low your crime rate was, people like him tended to end up in situations where having a gun at your side made a real difference in your chances of getting out alive.

“Brained the thing with a rock,” he lied to Meghan. “I think it’s dead. Slammed me into the wall, though. My ribs hurt like hell, but I’ll be fine.”

“Oh…” She let out a long, slow exhale of relief. “We have bandages, but maybe you should see a doctor — “

“We’ll see what the med scanner says,” Matt said. “Need a hand, Dameon?”

Dameon accepted his hand and pulled himself carefully to the top of the wall. His ribs and back screamed and his vision swam, and instead of standing up he lay there for a moment, taking careful breaths. He didn’t think anything was broken, but he had definitely cracked a rib.

“We’ll be right there. Check on the girl and start takeoff,” Matt told Meghan. He muted his mike with a gesture, and motioned for Dameon to do the same.
Fine. Dameon switched his off and pushed himself to a kneeling position. He went to stuff the gun back into his jacket, but Matt held his hand out for it.

“If you want your fingerprints all over it…” Dameon told him. “Unless you’re planning on turning me in?”

“Dammit, Dameon, I don’t know.” Matt ran his hands through his hair. “Why the hell do you have a gun at all?”

Dameon shrugged, not looking at him. “Came in useful today, didn’t it?”

Matt shook his head, incredulous. “What do you want me to do? Lie on the report about how we killed the thing? Really, we should take it back for studying, but we can’t do that with a blasted bullet hole through its head!”

“The only reason I brought it was because it was New York. Think about what just happened and tell me we shouldn’t have been better armed.”

“That may be true, but you can’t just take the law into your own hands,” Matt folded his arms. “Take it up to the top if you want us armed.”

“Look, you know I’m not going to snap and do anything stupid with this gun,” Dameon said.

“Doesn’t make you the exception.” But then Matt extended his arm and helped Dameon up. “We’ll talk about it in the jet. Let’s get going before another one of those things shows up.”