Story 1269: On Foot, Through Hell

They left the broken tower before dawn.

The signal had died, but its echoes still buzzed in their minds. Names they didn’t recognize. Screams without bodies. Places erased from every map. Juno walked ahead in silence, her boots sinking into cracked clay. Shade followed close, rifle low. H-13 limped behind, muttering diagnostics to himself.

There was no road. No markers. Only firelight on the horizon—and the stench of rot.

They had no more vehicles. No maps. No working gear. Just instincts, memory fragments, and whatever humanity hadn’t burned away.

This was the final stretch.

And it was hell.

The land ahead—Sector Null—was a scorched, lawless zone, abandoned before the outbreak even began. Once a mining complex, now a pit of collapsed earth and perpetual flame. It had become a fire trench, fueled by leaking gas veins and buried biowaste.

But it was the only route left.

“Feels like the ground’s breathing,” Shade muttered as they descended into a gulch. “Or bleeding.”