Recipe for the Apocalypse: I Cooked an S-Rank Monster

"Hey, Cook. If a monster comes through that wall, what are you gonna throw at it? A spatula?"

The voice cut through the buzz of the neon light above the counter. Griggs leaned over the steel surface, grinning. Rank-D Hunter. Claw scars across his jaw, too much beer in his blood. Two of his buddies snickered behind him.

Dash didn't look up. The fillet knife in his right hand kept moving, slicing a Rustmaw Rat, a thing the size of a sewer rat, into paper-thin sheets. Precise. No hesitation. Not for serving. For disposal. Monster meat never goes on a plate. First rule of Ironway.

"I'm talking to you, Cook." Griggs rapped his knuckles on the counter. "You hear me, or are your ears plugged with grease?"

"I heard you," Dash said. Flat voice. He set the last slice on a metal tray and shoved it toward the waste bin under the counter. "And the answer is a spatula, if it's sharp enough."

Griggs burst out laughing. "You hear that? Our CIV-7 wants to go to war with a spatula!"

In the corner of the room, a woman with short hair tied back in a lazy knot lifted her soup bowl and sipped without a sound. Kael Mireaux. Rank-A. Her eyes drifted toward the counter, toward Dash's left hand gripping the dead rat by the tail. A permanent burn scar covered the back of that hand all the way to the wrist, the skin shiny like melted plastic. Kael didn't say a word. She just watched. Then she went back to her bowl.

"Eleven portions tonight," Dash said, more to himself than to Griggs. He wiped the blade with a rag. "You guys want seconds, or have you had enough beer?"

"Seconds," one of Griggs's buddies said. "Canned meat again?"

"Canned meat," Dash confirmed. "Fresh protein ran out three days ago. Next shipment hasn't come in from Fort Flagstaff yet."

"Flagstaff." Griggs snorted. "If they're even still around. Last I heard, their east perimeter got breached last week. Twelve Hunters dead."

The table went quiet for a moment. One of Griggs's friends swallowed hard. "Don't talk like that during dinner."

"Why? Scared?" Griggs took a long pull of his beer. "Three years, and we're still eating canned food in some old military base. I used to think the end of the world would be fast. A blast, darkness, done. Turns out the apocalypse is slow. You wake up, you're hungry, you eat canned food, you go to sleep, you wake up again. And the monsters outside the walls just keep multiplying." He jabbed a finger toward the dark window behind the counter. "Tonight alone, two small breaches. Two. Last week, one. The month before that, zero. You see the pattern, Cook?"

Dash didn't answer. He was scrubbing the cutting board, working coarse salt into the Rustmaw Rat blood. But he heard. Everyone heard.

"Griggs." Kael finally spoke from the corner. Not loud. But the whole table went silent. "You want to eat, or do you want to make this cook lose his will to cook?"

Griggs clicked his tongue but stepped back from the counter. He returned to his table and downed the rest of his beer.

Dash exhaled. Slow. Barely audible. He stared out the window, past the glass, into the darkness beyond Ironway's perimeter wall. Three years ago, beyond that darkness, there had been Tucson. Streets. His father's restaurant. Now there were monsters, and dust, and a sky torn open somewhere to the south.

The Rusty Skillet. Forty-two seats. Used to be full every single night. Now eleven people, and half of them asked for canned meat because they didn't trust anything that came from outside the walls.

He flipped the sign on the counter. KITCHEN CLOSED. BROTH STILL ON.

Forty liters of bone broth. Not monster bones. Canned beef bones he'd been saving for two weeks. It sat simmering on the back burner. Fourteen hours in. Not done yet. If he killed the heat now, all that work was for nothing.

Then the alarm went off.

Not the long one. Three short bursts. Small breach. Standard. Dash had heard that sound dozens of times. From the ceiling speakers, Commander Aldric Sonnenveld's voice came through, flat as granite.

"Attention. Breach in Sector Seven. One entity, estimated Rank-C. Hunter teams, move out. All CIV-7 personnel, report to the underground shelter. Now."

Griggs stood and cracked his neck. "Let's go. Time to work." He glanced back at Dash. "You hear that, Cook? Underground. Don't let that monster get a look at you. It'll laugh."

His buddies laughed. They filed out. The door of The Rusty Skillet clanged shut.

Dash didn't move.

He stared at the stove behind him. Low flame. Big pot. Broth that wasn't finished. Fourteen hours.

"Four more minutes," he muttered. "Four minutes and I'll kill the heat."

He walked to the stove and lifted the lid. Steam curled up, carrying the smell of beef bones and caramelized onions. Perfect. Four more minutes.

He didn't hear the back wall of the kitchen crack.

Didn't hear claws scraping across the tile.

Didn't hear the heavy breathing that reeked of ash and rotting meat.

What he heard was a thud. Loud. Close. Right behind him. Dash spun around. And there, between the spice rack and the waste bin, stood an Ashback Jackal. Big as a mastiff. Its back gleamed with hot ash seeping through the pores of its skin. Yellow eyes. Locked on Dash. Then locked on the broth on the stove.

Dash stumbled backward. His spine hit the counter. His hand groped behind him, searching for a knife, for anything. His fingers closed around the handle of a cleaver. His father's cleaver. Heavy. Blunt at the tip, but sharp along the blade.

The Ashback Jackal lunged.

Dash swung on pure reflex. No thought. No training. The cleaver buried itself in the monster's neck. Deep. Down to the bone.

But the monster didn't fall.

It let out a shriek like metal grinding on metal and drove forward. Its claws clamped around Dash's left arm. The searing ash on its back pressed into his skin. Pain exploded through him. Dash screamed. The cleaver was still lodged in the Jackal's neck, but the monster kept moving, kept shoving, its jaws peeling open toward his face.

And outside, beyond the wall of The Rusty Skillet, now split wide open, not a single pair of Hunter footsteps was getting any closer.

No one knew he was here..