The sound of Raline's breathing was a ragged in the eerie silence of the ruined street. Devon heard every gasp, every hitch, and knew what it meant. His sister, already sick and weak, was hitting her limit.
'Crap. We can't keep this up.'
He stopped, holding up a hand. "Hold on," he said, his own voice rough. "Just… sit. For a second."
She didn't argue, collapsing onto a nearby bench with a face as pale as bone, her chest heaving. Devon crouched in front of her, his eyes darting from her worried face back towards the town square they'd just fled. The screaming hadn't stopped. It was just getting closer, faster than he predicted.
"You good?" he asked, the worry in his voice so thick he could taste it.
Raline just shook her head, fighting for air. She knew he was antsy, that he kept glancing back. They both knew what was coming.
"You should just go, bro," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Seriously. I'm just a burden…".
A hot flash of anger shot through Devon's chest. He turned to snap at her, to tell her how stupid that was, but the words died in his throat. She was looking at him with tears welling in her eyes, her expression completely broken. The anger vanished, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.
He stood up.
"Never," he hissed, the word feeling like a vow forged in steel.
His eyes, unnaturally sharp in the gloom since this whole mess started, scanned the darkness and debris. They landed on a motorcycle, knocked on its side by the earthquake that had started it all. The keys were still hanging from the ignition.
Hope. It was a stupid, dangerous feeling, but it surged through him.
He sprinted to the bike, heaving it upright with a grunt. He gave the handlebars a shake. Solid. Everything looked okay.
He swung his leg over, turned the key, and held his breath. The engine roared to life on the first try. He glanced at the fuel gauge.
'Holy shit.'
The needle was pointing to F. A grin split his face, the first real expression besides terror he'd felt all day. He revved the engine, spun the bike around, and screeched to a halt in front of Raline.
"Get on. Now," he ordered.
The relief on her face was all the thanks he needed. She scrambled on behind him without a word, her arms wrapping tight around his waist. Devon gunned the engine, weaving the bike through the rubble-choked streets, heading for the city limits.
But the city limits he remembered was gone. As they neared the edge of town, the familiar sight of the interstate highway was just… not there. In its place stood a range of jagged, black mountains that seemed to swallow the light.
"Devon…" Raline mumbled into his shoulder. "There's no mountain range near Newark. Especially not one that's legit pitch black…"
Devon slowed the bike to a stop, staring at the impossible peaks about two kilometres away. They felt *wrong*. A strange, cold dread emanated from them, a powerful gut feeling that screamed at him to stay away.
There were no plants, no signs of life. Just black, dead rock. It was like someone had taken a giant knife and sliced their city off from the world, then stitched it onto this nightmare landscape.
"How is this… it's like the city was just cut…?" Raline asked, her voice trembling.
"I… I don't know…" he admitted. Logic had checked out hours ago. His priority wasn't figuring out the why. It was keeping them alive. Specifically, keeping her alive.
Those mountains were his absolute last resort. An unknown place was probably filled with dangers he couldn't even imagine.
His eyes scanned the horizon, desperately searching for shelter. And then he saw it.
A small, multi-storey shopping centre, its building still standing. He knew that place. He knew there was a minimarket on the third floor. Food. Water. A defensible position.
"Hold on," he said, turning the bike sharply.
He parked the motorcycle in a sheltered spot behind the building, out of sight from the main road. The sounds of groans and pleas for help from earthquake victims trapped in the rubble could be heard here and there, but Devon tried to ignore them.
The skeleton skulls would soon arrive at their current location, and Raline was more important than anything in this world.
He helped Raline up the emergency staircase to the third floor. The place was empty. Everyone must have fled during the earthquake.
"Wait here, okay?" he told her once they were inside the minimarket.
"Where are you going?" she asked, fear creeping back into her voice.
"I have to block the stairs. Make sure none of those boneheads can get up here. I'll be quick".
Raline nodded, and Devon took off. He ran down to the ground floor and started dragging anything heavy he could find to block the stairwell—filing cabinets, chairs, even chunks of collapsed wall.
He did the same for the second floor, creating a messy but solid barrier. Still, he remembered seeing one of those skeletons leap onto the roof of a car with insane agility. They could probably climb up to the third floor windows.
When he got back, Raline was already helping. Together, they dismantled display shelves from the store, prying off wooden planks and metal support bars. They found a hammer and nails in the hardware section and started boarding up every single window on the third floor.
An hour later, it was done. Devon collapsed onto a mattress Raline had dragged out from a home goods store, his body screaming with exhaustion.
He chugged mineral water from a bottle. "I hope that's enough," he mumbled.
Raline was standing by one of the boarded-uup windows, peering through a small crack with a pair of binoculars she had found. Suddenly, she gasped, stumbling back.
He was on his feet in an instant, rushing to her side. Her face was even paler than before. He gently took the binoculars from her shaking hands and pressed his eye to the narrow gap they had left in the boards.
His stomach dropped.
A horde of them was walking down the street, heading straight for their building. He counted at least twenty skeletons, their bones clacking with an unnatural rhythm.
They wore war helmets, and some wore tattered clothes, while others wore nothing at all. But they all carried swords that were all drawn, and some also carried metal shields. But that wasn't the worst part.
One of them was riding a horse. A goddamn skeletal horse, draped in a tattered saddle cloth. It sat there like some kind of undead general, its empty eye sockets fixed directly on the street.
"They're really… all skeletons," Raline whispered, her hand clutching her chest in terror. "They're coming this way..."
'Shit,' Devon thought, his heart pounding against his ribs. 'Hope they won't know that we're here.'
The skulls were walking down the street, some of them acting like spies, looking for humans they hadn't killed yet. They searched thoroughly, through buildings, houses, shops, cars, buses, and sometimes stabbed the humans trapped in the earthquake rubble with the short swords they carried.
Devon and Raline did not hear a single sound come from their mouths to communicate, but the spy skulls suddenly returned to the side of the mounted skull from the edge of the city that directly borders the black mountains.
Then the skeleton troops marched away from that place, reentering the city.