Eos, Chapter 1: New York

“We’ve got a heat signature!” Dameon barked, tapping a finger on the infrared monitor. “Six o’clock and twenty, five hundred meters.”

“Acknowledged,” replied the new pilot beside him, a woman a bit younger than Dameon, maybe twenty-five. She brushed back long brown hair with one finger as she punched numbers into the hoverjet’s guidance systems. June — that was her name.

The hoverjet shuddered as its wings rotated into landing position. Dameon vaulted out of his seat and punched the button to open the cockpit door. It slid open, revealing a redhead zipping up a radiation suit in the lounge room that made up the main body of the hoverjet. Her curly hair whipped across her face as she threw Dameon’s suit at him with a grin.

Dameon caught it with a grunt, the lead-lined suit heavy for its size. “You have the first-aid kit?”

“Right here. And a ‘thank you’ for the suit wouldn’t hurt either.” She winked at him. Jade was the other member of Dameon’s search-and-rescue team — the medic, or as Dameon liked to tease her, the “CPR guy.”

“Inefficient,” Dameon fired back, stepping into the suit and zipping it up in one fluid movement. Anticipation tingled through him. You always knew you were in for an exciting time when you had to wear the rad suits.

“Honestly, Dameon, it’s not a life-or-death race.” Jade had pulled her stun gun carefully from its holster and was checking its settings.

Dameon did the same. “In New York, it is. The number of times I’ve told them they should give us real guns for priority ones… Remember Rockport?”

Jade gave him a sidelong glance as she holstered her gun again. “Yes, I do.” She gave a slight shudder. “And New York is worse. The stories don’t scare you?”

The stories of massive, twisted dogs, cats, and rats, mutated by a combination of radiation and the Ecclasia virus, prowling the streets of ruined New York for forty years? “Scare me? Darling,” Dameon drawled, knowing it would make her laugh, “they’re what’s exciting me.”

He felt it. The adrenaline, the heady rush of danger. A goal in mind, a weapon in hand, something to fight for. Everything exhilarating about his old FBI days with none of the… drawbacks. His mind shied away from those. Separate them. That was the only way to stay sane.

He put his hand to his chest. The outline of a hard object pressed against his torso. Just in case.

The hovercraft landed with a soft jolt. “Let’s go out there and get them,” he said, shouldering his emergency pack and checking his gun and communicator one last time.

Jade took a deep breath. Her spine straightened, her shoulders thrown back. Her hair she briskly pulled into a tie, and her face set into a look of fierce determination. There she was. The warrior. His teammate and best friend. Maybe, one day, something more. God, she was hot when she had her game face on.

Then she checked her portable infrared and swore loudly. The moment collapsed in on itself; Jade was just Jade again — Dameon almost laughed at himself for thinking anything more. He fumbled with his own infrared scanner, squinting at the tiny display. The warm red dot was moving out of view. “He’s running?”

“Yeah. He’s going to fall into a pool of acid rain and get himself killed. Permission to move out?”

“Granted,” Dameon said, following her down the short hallway and to the door at the back of the hoverjet. The door hissed open, and Dameon scanned a ruined New York, stun gun in hand.

Rubble. Hundreds of feet in every direction, nothing bigger than half-skeletons of smaller buildings, which twisted, jagged into the sky. The pilot had landed on top of a small plateau that might have once been a plaza. Now, it was a minefield of crumbled rock and acidic pools.

“Hurry,” Jade urged. “We’ll lose him. He’s heading southwest.”

They picked their way through the debris that coated the ground, much of it so twisted and charred that Dameon could hardly tell if it was metal or concrete. Raised bumps pockmarked each piece of rubble, remnants of bubbles of gas that had formed and burst in the bomb’s intense wave of heat.

Before Dameon had arrived in Layer 32, he had only seen pictures of the devastation an atomic bomb could cause. They’d only been used twice back home in Layer 7, and both cities had been rebuilt for decades. Here, 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?” Dameon asked Jade, to get his mind off of what something that could do that to cement could do to human skin.

“Play up the rescue aspect, obviously,” she responded immediately, skirting the edge of a puddle. “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 — “

Jade broke off as a gust of wind whistled between the rubble, carrying with it the sound of… something… sliding over the ground, mixed with a sound like leaves — or limbs — rustling. Dameon spun. “Something’s nearby.”

It could be hiding anywhere — the rubble was a nightmare from a security standpoint. Too many places to hide; it made Dameon’s skin crawl.

“Run?”

Dameon shook his head. “Let’s not attract attention yet.”

They reached the edge of the plaza and jumped down two feet into what must have been the street. “There,” Jade said, pointing. “He’s in there.”

On the other side of the street, a one-story building rose, a solid mass against a too-flat horizon. Sheltered by a skyscraper, it had survived the blast with four walls standing and only half the roof collapsed. A straight line slashed the front wall in half, one side of the wall bleached white, the other a faded gray.

“Weird paint job,” Dameon murmured.

“No, it was all one color,” Jade shook her head. “The flash… bleached it.”

Dameon swallowed and glanced behind him, towards the epicenter.

“Dameon, sir,” the voice crackled on Dameon’s communicator. It was June the pilot. “I’ve been monitoring the wide-range infrared. Be advised that you’re near something… not human. Almost certainly dangerous.”

“Yes, we heard it. Heading and direction?”

“West, thirty degrees and about a hundred meters away. It’s moving towards you, but you still have time.”

“Thank you,” Dameon said in a clipped voice.

They had crossed the street and were stepping up to what must have once been a door, probably of sliding glass. Only a twisted lump remained.

Dameon lifted his foot to step over it. Jade put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait. Put the stun gun away.” She had already holstered hers. “Non-threatening, remember?”

“I know.” Dameon glanced down at his gun. It felt so good to hold it. His hand twitched. With that thing out there… But he did as she said.

“Hello?” he called, stepping into the building proper and squinting into the shadows under a tangle of rotting wood. “We’re rescuers,” he called. “Our scanners detected you when you… appeared here, 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.

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Dameon said, taking another step towards the corner. “You can probably tell the air is acidic. Do your lungs ache? 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 eased 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,” Jade said. Dameon shot a glance at him. Don’t lie to her, he mouthed.Even if it calmed her now, at some point she would have to be told the truth just like Dameon had been told: 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.

Dameon stepped back and nodded Jade forward. He wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. Jade could coax her out.

Jade took a few steps forward and crouched down, holding her palms out to show she meant no harm. “Trusting us is better than staying here,” she encouraged. “Are you hurt? I have a first aid kit.” She lifted it to show the girl.

The girl took her time, but responded. “Only scrapes and bruises. But… my eyes are prickly. It hurts to breathe.”

“That’s the acid in the air. If you come with us right now, you won’t breathe it long enough to hurt you. There’s radiation here, too, but we have medicine that will counter the effects.”

The girl nodded, considering. “What happened here? How did I get here?”

“We’ll explain both of those things the moment you’re safely in our ship and treated with antirads,” Jade said in the same patient tone. Dameon smiled, watching. It was working. He’d seen it time and time again. The girl would walk out with them in a minute.

“Dameon,” June said, an edge to her voice.

“Not now,” muttered Dameon. What if the girl heard? Jade had shuffled forward a few feet and was reaching out her hand in silent invitation. A moment passed.

“It — whatever it is — it’s right outside!” June cried.

The girl took Jade’s hand.

A high screech pierced the air.

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

“Other exits?” Dameon said curtly. The girl nodded, face pale. “Back this way.”

“I distract it, you take her,” Dameon ordered Jade.

He charged through the front door, hand automatically darting to his holster and drawing his gun. At first, he couldn’t see anything, just rubble. Then the thing pounced.

A blur of mottled gray shot past Dameon. He dove to the side. It barely missed him,sprawling in a heap of limbs behind Dameon, but scrambling to its feet before Dameon could shoot it.

The thing 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 head was level with 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.

Damn it! The setting was too low. Why hadn’t he put it on the highest in the first place? Moving on instinct, he stumbled backwards, thumb flicking the radiation setting to the highest, and shot the beast again.

It stiffened, but still crashed into Dameon, knocking him over, its claws tearing at his radiation suit as it writhed in pain.

Dameon struggled free, climbing to his feet and shooting the thing again. Time. He had to buy time. He vaulted over the creature and landed on the ground at a run, scanning the area to find Jade. She and the girl had made it across the street and were easing around a large puddle, only a hundred meters from the hoverjet.

But the yelps from behind had turned 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 down the street instead of crossing. 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. The long way meaning to cross the street further down, and come at the plaza from the other side. “Get the girl onboard and be ready to close the hatch when I come through.”

A hard metal object pressed against Dameon’s skin underneath the radiation 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 Jade. Good.

Across the street now, between the rubble of two buildings. He’d get past this block and turn left, and at the end of the alley would be the plaza, and the hoverjet would be right there, the hatch open and waiting. Behind him, the mutant yipped as if it were enjoying the chase. Too close. It was too close.

Dameon pointed his gun behind him and started shooting at random. The thing yelped, but barely stumbled. A rock caught Dameon’s ankle and he almost fell. Now he focused on the ground, trying to keep his balance despite the treacherous footing. 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, atop which was the plaza and the hoverjet. He had thought he would only have to leap up a food or two. He had been wrong.

Damn it. The thing would’ve been a breeze to climb, but not when a two-hundred-pound monstrosity was on his tail. Dameon’s heart pounded and his head spun. The thing’s breath was hot on his neck now, spurring Dameon to new speeds. He actually gained a few yards on the creature.

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. Dameon had only one chance.

“God, Dameon!”

Dameon’s heart sank as Jade appeared, peering over the ledge, a look of panic on her face. He shouldn’t do it, not with her watching.

He would have to.

He holstered his gun.

“What the hell are you doing?” cried Jade. “We’ll shoot it at the same time.”

“Timing… impossible,” Dameon gasped, hand darting to the zipper on his suit. The wall loomed in front of him.

“Do you have a better solution!”

He did. Jade would see his secret, but there was no other option. It was shoot or be killed. He 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 mutant’s teeth snapped at his neck.

The wall. Dameon leapt, spinning in the air to slam against it with his back to 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, two feet from Dameon.

The mass of the brute slammed into him a second later. The thing had died instantly, but its momentum carried it forward. Fresh pain exploded in Dameon’s side. He 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!” Jade said, shock and excitement in her voice. “I thought you were a goner.”

“You’re safe?” June’s voice came from Dameon’s communicator. “What happened?”

“Lucky shot with the stun gun,” Dameon lied. “It fell and hit its head.” He glanced up at Jade, who raised an eyebrow at the lie, but was actually smiling at him. At his glance, she hesitated, then nodded.

That meant they’d talk about it later, but from that smile… Dameon didn’t think it bothered her that he had an illegal gun.