Brotherhood of the Last Shelter

Into The Flue

The smell of fried circuits and charred flesh was so thick I could taste it on my tongue. Grey smoke pooled against the ceiling, drifting out through the cracked doorway like a beacon into the dark subway corridor.

Donald snatched our canvas rucksacks from the floor, throwing the straps over his shoulders. His face was smeared with black soot, and his work gloves were torn at the knuckles.

"How much time did that screen give us, James?" Donald asked, his voice low and strained.

"Thirty-five minutes now," I said. My boots crunched over shattered brick and loose glass as I moved toward the workbench. "The shock pulled juice from the main line. The noise will carry through the pipes."

I reached for the few crates we had left. With a thought, I filled my remaining storage slots with four boxes of dry rations, two trauma kits, and the heavy yellow emergency radio. The weight pressed against my mind, a cold, dull pull that made my temples ache.

Luggard was already kneeling beside Marcus, helping the old man slip his uninjured arm through the strap of a light canvas pouch. Marcus’s face was slick with cold sweat, but his teeth were clenched tight against the pain.

"Don't worry about carrying me, boys," Marcus whispered, his voice gravelly from the chemical smoke. "Just keep me upright on the rungs. Once my boots find the steel, I can climb."

"You don't push yourself," Luggard told him gently, wiping a streak of red mortar dust from the old man's forehead. "You take one rung, then I take one rung right behind you. If your boot slips, my shoulder catches your weight."

Donald scrambled over the smoking wreckage in the center of the room. The two corpses were fused together in a sickening heap of twisted iron plates, melted copper coils, and blackened bone. He planted his boot on the drill machine's crushed shoulder to steady himself, peering into the shattered brick flue.

"The opening is wide enough," Donald called back softly. "The impact blew the whole brick collar open. I can see the galvanized ladder. It's anchored deep into the stone wall of the intake."

"Go first, Donald," I said, stepping up behind him. "Check the rungs. Make sure the blast didn't shake the anchors loose from the mortar."

Donald squeezed his frame through the jagged opening, vanishing into the vertical brick shaft. A second later, the dull, solid thunk of his heavy work boot kicking iron echoed down the flue.

"Solid!" Donald’s muffled voice drifted down. "Steel is cold, but dry. No grease, no slime. Ladder runs straight up into the dark. I'm climbing five paces ahead to clear any loose brick."

"Luggard, get him up," I said, turning to Marcus.

I slid my arm beneath Marcus’s good shoulder, taking his full weight as we lifted him off the canvas bedding. The old man let out a sharp hiss between his teeth as the movement pulled at the dressing on his collarbone, but he didn't cry out. He dragged his feet through the rubble, his knuckles white around Luggard’s wrist.

We guided him through the broken vent.

The air inside the brick shaft was sharply different from the room below. It was freezing, carrying a damp, earthy chill that bit through our thin cotton shirts. From somewhere high above our heads, a faint, rhythmic clack-clack-clack drifted down the flue.

The brass gear movement of the park clock tower.

"I have the bottom rungs," Luggard called from inside the shaft. "Marcus, step on my hand. Use my knee as a step."

Marcus placed his worn work boot on Luggard's thigh, grunting with effort as he hauled his torso up onto the first iron rung. Luggard followed directly behind him, pressing his chest against the old man's back, acting as a human brace to keep him from falling into the dark.

I stood alone in the ruined maintenance room.

The silence here felt hollow now, unnatural.

Then, far down the dark subway tunnel outside our broken doorway, a soft sound reached my ears.

Click.

Scrape.

It wasn't one pair of claws. It was dozens. A rapid, skittering patter of metal and bone dragging over the dry granite ballast of Track 2, moving fast, drawn by the smell of ozone and roasted meat.

A cold red prompt flickered across my eyes.

Warning: Hostile pack entering local perimeter. Estimated contact: 4 minutes. Shelter status: Abandoned.

I didn't look back. I stepped through the broken brick collar, grabbed the cold iron ladder, and began to climb.

The vertical shaft was narrow, barely four feet wide. The brick walls were rough, scraping against my elbows as I pulled myself up into the gloom. Ten feet below me, the pale yellow beam from our dropped flashlight illuminated the floor of the room we had left behind.

Then the first shape crossed the threshold below.

It slid into the light on six spindly, multi-jointed brass limbs. It was longer than the scavenger drones we saw in the sewer, its pale grey flesh stitched together with rusty iron wire, a single needle-thin snout sniffing the soot-covered floor.

Two more poured in right behind it, climbing over the fused wreckage of the drill machine, tearing into the charred meat with frantic, mechanical clicks.

My breath caught in my throat. I climbed faster, keeping my boots dead silent on the center of each rung.

Twenty feet up, the air grew thinner and colder. The smell of rotten earth faded, replaced by the clean, sharp scent of pine needles, wet asphalt, and autumn frost.

Ahead of me, Donald's hand reached down through the dark.

"Grab my wrist, James," Donald whispered.

I reached up, locking my fingers around his forearm. His rough, calloused grip hauled me up onto a narrow wooden floor.

We were inside the hollow base of the clock tower.

Old wooden gears, thick as wagon wheels, turned slowly above us, driven by heavy iron counterweights hanging from steel cables. Faint grey morning light filtered through the decorative brick louvers around the perimeter, casting striped shadows across the dusty floorboards.

Luggard was sitting against a timber beam, breathing heavily, with Marcus slumped beside him. The old man's eyes were closed, his head tilted back against the wood, his chest rising and falling in shallow, exhausted beats.

Donald knelt by the narrow slit of the louver, peering out into the morning fog.

"Look at the street," Donald whispered, his voice dead flat.

I crawled over to the brick slit, keeping low.

Through the mist, the municipal park stretched out below us, its green lawns covered in a thin layer of white frost. The pond around the clock tower was dead still, the water black as ink.

Beyond the park's ornamental wrought-iron fence, the city boulevard was unrecognizable.

Three civilian cars were crushed flat in the center of the road, their roofs caved in like empty aluminum soda cans. No fires burned; no alarms rang. A heavy, suffocating silence hung over the concrete buildings.

At the intersection two blocks north, an armored troop transport bearing Thorne’s corporate logo sat tilted on the sidewalk. Its heavy steel doors were torn clean off their hinges, hanging by frayed hydraulic lines. Thick black fluid was smeared across the yellow crosswalk lines, pooling around empty combat boots and discarded rifles.

Thorne hadn't sealed the quadrant to protect his supplies.

His private forces had been slaughtered trying to contain whatever came out of the earth when the power died.

Donald turned his head, looking at me in the dim light of the wooden tower. His eyes were wide, the tired exhaustion replaced by a cold, sharp dread.

"James," Donald breathed softly. "Who is hunting who out there?"