New Vegas: Sheason's Story - Chapter 124: Tunnels Down Below

A familiar, intoxicating scent wafted into my nostrils. My eyes cracked open only to be greeted by a view full of raven hair. I smiled at the sensation of soft lips caressing my neck, and smiled even broader when I felt her arms wrap around my waist. I reached out to draw her in closer, pressing my body into hers, and a contented sigh escaped my mouth.

I didn’t know quite where I was. I didn’t know up from down, left from right, white from black, or anything in between. None of it mattered. I didn’t care. The woman I loved was in my arms, and we were holding each other close… almost like we would simply float away if we let go.

“I love you, Tu…” I heard myself say. Her cheek brushed my own. Silky fingertips were snaking their way up from my waist and across my chest, sending electric shivers up my spine. Her hands lightly traced my muscles and up to my neck, coming to rest at my cheeks where she took my face in her hands.

And then…

Pain.

My eyes snapped open, but I couldn’t see anything. A searing, sharp, agonizing pain ripped through my chest. It was instantly hard to breathe, and it felt as though my heart had been split clean in two. My whole body shuddered and shook; I tried to look down, to try and work out what was going on, but no part of my body wanted to cooperate.

Knife.

A knife was buried in the center of my chest. Buried all the way up to the hilt. I stared at the hunk of metal lodged in the center of my torso for several seconds, gurgling silently as the back of my throat closed up; my head was shaking, and my vision was starting to cloud over. I finally looked back up just in time to see Tuera… walking away. The raven haired love of my life had her back turned to me and she was walking away.

“Wh… wh-why?” I coughed out. Blood was beginning to dribble out of the corner of my mouth, and the pain had finally reached my head. It was getting harder to think. She halted in her tracks, and looked at me over her shoulder with a single green eye from beneath her flowing locks.

“It was a dream, Sheason.” She said softly. “We were… nothing more than a dream. I just woke up first.” She turned ahead and kept walking away. My head grew heavy, and my sight grew dim. Just before the darkness overtook me, she said one final thing that echoed in my mind:

“I’m sorry.”

I woke with a start, still sitting against the wall of the Quonset hut. I was breathing heavily, and my skin was bathed in sweat. Roscoe was in my hand, and the arm holding the pistol was straight as a board, aiming at nothing. I think I may have screamed. Had I screamed?

“Friend_Courier,” ED-E bobbed in the air just above me. “I shall ask you again: are you alright? Do you require assistance?”

I didn’t answer for quite a while. I felt paralyzed in shock as I sat there wide eyed, gun pointed at nothing, and my breathing heavy as a deuce-and-a-half. I eventually managed to calm myself down, and focus on what ED-E had said… but my head was pounding from a splitting headache, and I couldn’t think straight.

“Sheason,” Sue spoke up from my chest. “Your heart is hovering around 150 beats per minute, and my cardiac dampeners are unable to compensate. Would you like me to administer some anxiety medication?”

“Uh… no… no, I’m… I’m fine…” I set Roscoe against the ground, and clutched my forehead. I focused entirely on steadying my breathing, getting things back to normal. “I just… just some bad dreams. Just a nightmare, that’s all.”

Where the fuck had that come from? I hadn’t had that dream in… years. It took a few minutes of conscious effort to get my breathing back to normal, and for the pounding in my chest to stop… but that sharp pain from the nightmare was still there.

“History will always be there…” Ulysses words rattled around in my mind. “No matter how far you walk.”

“Ugh…” I buried my face in my hands. “Probably just indigestion. I bet you any money it was just that 200 year old MRE disagreeing with me…” I laughed grimly and shook my head. “How long was I out?”

“Slightly less than two hours,” ED-E buzzed overhead. “The sandstorm appears to have passed. I believe it is safe to venture outside once again.”

“Good,” I pushed up off the ground, and grabbed my discarded helmet, snapping it back in place. “We should… yeah. Let’s get moving, while we still have a bit of daylight left.” I need to clear my head. Focus. Compartmentalize. What I really needed was a distraction. And it’s been proven many a time that there’s no better distraction than mindless violence. SO!

Let’s go huntin’.

“C’mon, meatsack!” I yelled out, dodging a wide swing from an enormous sword. It looked like it’d been made from a cars bumper. “I’m right here! Come and get me!” The Marked Man attacking me said nothing. He just stared at me from within a full-face helmet welded together with scrap metal and swung again. I sidestepped out of the way, and before he knew what was happening, I was right in his face and had my cybernetic hand grasped firmly underneath his chin. I kicked him in the center of his chest – and his whole lower jaw came free. The rest of him practically flew backward into a piece of ruined concrete highway. The gigantic metal sword flew out of his hands and clattered to the ground at my feet.

“Is that the best you got, skinjob?” I asked with a laugh, kicking the sword into the air and catching it with my cybernetic hand. He pushed off against the concrete rubble, trying to get back on his feet, but by then the sword was already flying through the air. It only stopped when it was through the middle of his chest and he was pinned to the wall.

“Stick around.” I said with a smug look under my helmet that nobody could see.

“That was terrible.” Sue groaned. I just shrugged.

“Maybe so. I thought it was funny…” To be honest, I was both proud and ashamed of that one. I looked around at what was left of this small Marked Man camp. Bodies, weapons, and spent ammo casings were strewn everywhere as the wind howled overhead. There had only been about six of them here, so it hadn’t been that difficult…

The Marked Men were tough, sure. But they weren’t invincible, and I’d picked up quite a few tricks in the last few weeks for dealing with bad guys who didn’t die when they were supposed to. The best bet when you start out? Aim for the head, like you’re in an Old World zombie movie. And, if that doesn’t work, go for what I’ve dubbed “The Ghost People Method” of hacking their limbs off. Or blowing them up with explosives.

So far, it seemed to be working. Rifle bullets to the chest had been fairly useless against the Marked Men, but rifle bullets to the head worked quite well. And, more than that, they couldn’t attack you if they had no arms. Or couldn’t move, like the poor unfortunate pinned to the wall with his own sword.

I knelt down and grabbed one of the discarded weapons lying on the street: a flare gun. That was the thing that I really didn’t get. The Marked Men here had been using squad tactics. Flanking maneuvers, proper use of cover, trying to flush me out with grenades when they thought they spotted me. They acted like professional soldiers (which, obviously, made them very predictable)… but for some reason, whenever they thought they were under attack, they seemed to start the fight by firing signal flares. Not up in the air, like you’d think, but down in the direction of whoever they thought was attacking. They’d done it in the fortress before the sandstorm earlier, and they’d done it again here at this small outpost.

A sound off to my left derailed my train of thought. The Marked Man pinned to the wall was slowly trying to pull himself free, by shoving his impaled chest up the length of the sword still lodged in the concrete. I reached down and pulled my double barrel off my hip, and aimed the sawed off directly into his face.

“Shut up, daddy’s thinking.” There was a boom from both barrels, and he was suddenly without a face. The Marked Man went limp like a ragdoll, and I shoved the sawed off back in its holster. “Alright, ED-E? You’ve been watching this whole thing up from on high. Thoughts?”

“Well,” ED-E buzzed down from his vantage point high above us. “It would seem that the hostiles have set up this camp to provide additional fortification for this barricade.” He zoomed over to my right, and hovered over a large wall made up of old cars, scrap metal, and at least one of those warheads I’d seen. It seemed to be blocking the entrance to an old tunnel.

“A barricade, huh? I guess this means they don’t want people going this way.” As I spoke, I pulled the laser detonator out of my duster.

“It would certainly seem so, yes,” ED-E said, buzzing through the air and settling into a spot right behind me. He definitely knew what was coming next.

“That seems like a good sign to me! Now, we could spend two or three hours trying to climb over the barricade, wasting all that we have left of the day. OR…” I pointed the laser detonator at the warhead wedged into the middle of the wall. Five seconds later, the entire barricade was consumed in flame, buffeting me with an enormous gust of wind. My Geiger counter spiked rapidly, and then slowly faded away. The whole wall seemed to vaporize – except for the cars on the top, which were thrown to the side, howling with the remnants of their car alarms as they were turned into meteors of smoking, molten slag. “… we could just do that.”

“That…” ED-E wobbled a bit in the air, transfixed by the flaming carnage. “That was impressive…”

“That was awesome!” Sue corrected. Note to self: whenever Sue gets annoyed at me for making a bad pun, blow something up. That should fix the problem.

“Friend_Courier,” ED-E followed close behind as I made my way to the now cleared tunnel entrance. “Are you adding the flare gun to your collection of firearms?” I looked down, and realized I still had the flare gun in my left hand. I shrugged, and shoved it in my duster, looking around to see if there were any spare flares for it lying around.

“Yeah, why not? I figure, when we run into more Marked Men, I might be able to lob some flares back at them. Might confuse them enough to create an opening.” It’s sure been confusing the hell out of me…

As I made my way up the uneven rubble leading to the half-moon tunnel entrance, I saw some more graffiti on the rubble ahead. A white flag marking… and next to it, was what appeared to be simple instructions:

STAY OUT

BELOW IS DEATH

That seems ominous.

“That seems promising!” I heard Sue say, to which she quickly added: “The white flag markers mean we’re going the right way, right?”

“Do they?” ED-E asked, hovering by my chest. “It is possible the marks left by Enemy_Courier do not actually mean anything. His claim of a pattern could be a bluff.”

“No,” I said, finally getting close to the graffiti. “I don’t think that was a lie. I saw these same kind of symbols in the Big Empty. The red ones mean danger, definitely. The blue ones… I think those are meant to mark… like, supply caches. Ammo dumps. Valuables, maybe? And the white ones…” I brushed a hand against the white paint. “Maybe they mean I’m going the right way?” I wasn’t so sure. The first time I’d seen the white marker was at the weather station, shortly before getting my arm cut off. The other white markers here in The Divide seemed to be pointing me in the right direction…

“Or maybe they’re just pointing me the way Ulysses wants me to go…” I cast a gaze down into the tunnel. That sinking feeling took hold in the pit of my stomach again.

It sure did look dark down there.

The deeper we descended into the ruined, collapsed tunnel, the quieter everything became. The howling wind from outside got softer and softer the further along we went, until suddenly I couldn’t hear it at all. And no wonder – among the rubble high overhead and all around us, I could see large ruined buildings mixed in with the chunks of highway. Skyscrapers that had tipped onto their side, collapsing against one another and intruding into the underground. It would’ve made for an impressive sight if it hadn’t been so unsettling.

The strangest thing (at first) was that I didn’t need to use nightvision to see down here. There was some kind of bioluminescent cave fungus growing in the corners and out of the cracks in the rubble. It wasn’t daylight by any means, but the mushrooms and moss radiated a soft blueish-green glow that made it just bright enough to see. Almost.

“I am getting a bad feeling about this…” ED-E buzzed along overhead. Because of how the buildings had collapsed, there was lots of room overhead… but not so much space where I was trying to walk. Angular outcroppings of rock and concrete smashed into ruined cars and trucks, creating sheer vertical surfaces barely wide enough to squeeze through.

“Yeah… me -” I grunted, trying to squeeze through. “-me too,” I let out a sigh when I finally broke free of the tight crevasse. Thankfully, it looked like things got a little wider from –

A roar echoed out from somewhere in the darkness. I shrugged my shoulder and grabbed hold of the G36. There weren’t many of those glowing mushrooms around this wide open space down here, so I could barely see. Cautiously, I reached down and pressed the button to activate Sue’s cloaking. An electric crackle from above me let me know ED-E had followed my lead.

Another guttural roar echoed through the cavern. The acoustics of this place were all fucked up – I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. I started slowly creeping forward, transparent rifle at the ready in my see-through hands.

“Friend_Courier,” ED-E’s voice came in with a soft crackle through my helmet’s speaker. “Movement. Your 2 O’ Clock.”

I crouched down low and looked over to my right, quick as I could. I didn’t see anyth- wait, no! There! A faint silhouette moving quickly among the rubble at the far end of this flat patch. It was dark and cast in shadow, but even from this distance, the outline of the hulking figure with a row of spines on its back and a massive swinging tail was unmistakable:

Deathclaw.

My blood ran ice cold, and I froze. I didn’t have anywhere near the kind of firepower required to take one of those on… and if memory served, Stripe could see me even with Sue’s camo active. An adult deathclaw would have no…

The shadow of the deathclaw kept moving, and disappeared into the darkness away from me. It howled again, the sound echoing off of every surface in the cave.

“… h-uh.” I muttered under my breath. “That is damn peculiar.” I was confused. What just happened?

There was another roar, somewhere else in the cavern… and the more I heard it, the more I realized that it did not sound like a normal deathclaw. It didn’t sound angry. It didn’t sound hungry. It almost sounded like it was in… pain? No. No, that wasn’t possible.

Was it?

“Friend_Courier,” ED-E whispered softly as I finally started to move. “What are you doing?”

“Something’s wrong,” I said, switching my eyes to nightvision, and carefully making my way forward. “I’m gonna check it out…” Even as I said it, the words felt wrong. And then things got even stranger. When I caught up to where the deathclaw had been running, I came across a trail of shiny, viscous fluid coating the ground. Even bathed in green, I could tell that it was blood.

There was a horrendous, blood curdling howl from somewhere up ahead. But then… there was another sound that didn’t make sense: a soft clattering, chittering sound, almost like… insect chitin rubbing against each other? Were there giant ants or radscorpions down here, too? There was too much debris everywhere, and I couldn’t quite figure out where the sound was coming from. But it was probably a good bet that if I followed the path of blood, it would lead me to the deathclaw.

Instead, it led to a wrecked shipping crate sticking at an odd angle out of the ground. I kept my breathing shallow and silent when I took cover at the edge of the metal crate. The trail of blood on the ground led inside… and that chittering was much louder now. I couldn’t hear any more growls, but I did hear the sounds of gnashing teeth and tearing flesh. And worryingly, it sounded like more than one mouth doing the gnashing.

Cautiously, I peered my head around the edge and inside: there was a rush of movement, and I just barely managed to make out several pinpoints of light. In an instant, they all seemed to simply vanish into the darkness. All that was left when the points of lights disappeared were the faintest whispers of clattering chitin echoing in the empty darkness.

Well, that managed to loosen my bowels a bit.

Alright numb-nuts. Stay focused. I rounded the corner completely, invisible hands still clutching an invisible rifle ready to fire. In the center of a pile of refuse in the crate was the lifeless hulking mass of the deathclaw. But there was nothing else. I knelt down to get a closer look, the whole area awash with the green haze of my cybernetic eyes nightvision, and saw that the deathclaw’s body was covered in thousands of lacerations. Claw marks of various shapes and sizes criss-crossed each other over every inch of the scaly skin – several of the deeper ones were still pouring blood. Chunks of its flesh had been ripped and torn away, leaving uneven gashes all over its chest and limbs.

This wasn’t the work of a radscorpion, or giant ants, or any other creatures I’d ever encountered in the wasteland. This was… this was something else. Something I’d never seen before. But the kicker? The thing that really made this whole experience surreal?

The deathclaw had no head.

“I think I have found something of interest.” I practically jumped out of my skin when I heard ED-E’s voice in my ear.

“Right…” I said, stepping backwards away from the grisly and unsettling sight, and looked around to try and find ED-E. He was no longer invisible, and was floating above a curved hunk of metal wedged between two angled pieces of concrete. I was trying to remain calm as I made my way over to the floating metal sphere, but I couldn’t quite seem to manage it. Every tiny noise of boots brushing against gravel under my feet seemed amplified…

“Alright, what have you found?” I whispered, trying to make as little sound as possible. ED-E buzzed down into view, and I took another look at the curved hunk of metal before me. It took a second, but my mind finally made the connection – and I momentarily forgot my fear, balking at the sheer absurdity of the image presented before me. Looking at it up close like this, the profile was unmistakable – even turned upside down and on its side. But the sight was just so ridiculous that I had to ask:

“What the – what is that?” I said aloud, forgetting to whisper.

“I believe that is a tugboat, Friend_Courier,” ED-E answered simply.

“A tugboat,” I repeated flatly.

“Yes,” ED-E agreed.

“A… a boat. Here.” I paused, staring at the upside-down seafaring vessel, stranded underground amidst piles of rubble. “What? Wait… what?! How did it get here? We’re in the desert! Miles from the ocean!”

“Approximately 220 miles from the point of origin, if the faded markings on the hull are any indication.” ED-E noted. I waved a hand at it while nodding, a feeble and bewildered expression on my face underneath my helmet.

“Exactly! What’s it even doing here?!”

“That, I do not know,” ED-E proclaimed. “But that was not the something of interest I wished to bring to your attention.” He floated down, to a spot right next to the inexplicable tugboat: a collection of mutilated, withered corpses and military equipment.

Ah, yes. There was the focus that I needed, brought to us by that lovely emotion, fear. I crouched down low to get a closer look. The bodies were practically skeletons. The last vestiges of skin and hair held the bodies together… at least, the body parts that weren’t torn apart or missing. The uniforms they were wearing were easily identifiable, however, even torn up as they were.

“NCR,” I whispered, peering over one of the most intact bodies. “Rangers, by the look of things. Been dead a long time.” I reached for the neck of the most intact one, to try and see if I could grab hold of the dog tags… and instead, a folded piece of paper fell out of the folds of the armor. I clicked the button on my belt, returning to visibility so I could grab hold of it and actually read the words. I unfolded the square, and scanned the page:

1st Platoon, Cazador Company, 4th Battalion Rangers

Bravo Team Mission Orders

At 0600 hours, Bravo Team will conduct sweep-and-clear operations in advance of the main force. Early intelligence suggests the tunnels are only sparsely populated by small, subterranean semi-humanoids, which are easily cowed by bright light and loud noises. Bravo team has been issued several M84 stun grenades for this purpose, and is expected to meet minimal resistance.

Off in the distance, I heard a sound – something scraping against rock. I dropped the paper, clicked the camo back on, and gripped the rifle tighter, looking around. Part of me wanted to believe it was just debris shifting… a natural sound you’d hear in the underground, and not the first sign of impending doom.

A soft clicking echoed from some unseen corner, and I knew instantly that I was being watched.

“We should leave,” ED-E said; although the voice came through the speaker next to my ear, I could see him already floating up, far out of reach. “I am registering movement, but there is…” He paused. “The signal is odd. The… it is.. fading in and out…”

“Where?” I hissed. “Where is it coming from?”

“11 O’ Clock… no, wait, 4 O’ Clock… I – I mean 9 O’ Clock… 6 O’ Clock…” At that point, he gave up, and just said: “I am detecting movement in every direction, closing fast. Multiple signatures.”

I was already moving at that point. Even with the nightvision, it was hard to navigate down here… and even though I could hear the sounds all around me – the chittering chitin, claws and talons scraping against rock, that clicking that I finally recognized as teeth snapping together in alien jaws – I couldn’t see any of them.

A thought struck me, and I quickly switched from nightvision to that false-color infrared thermal vision. I looked around and saw nothing. No heat signatures. Everything around me was washed in various shades of blue – only the heat from my own body, the footprints I was leaving behind on the rocky uneven surface, and ED-E flying above me were showing up. Were they keeping their distance? Or did they just not show up on infrared at all?

I quickly switched back to nightvision, and got my answer: they just didn’t show up on infrared.

All around me, in the various darkened corners of the collapsed tunnel, I could see pinpricks of light burning in the darkness. It was the kind of bright glow that only ever happens when you look at eyes with nightvision. There were just… there were so many of them! So many sets of eyes!

“Friend_Courier, this way!” ED-E said, zooming along overhead. “I think the exit is this way!”

I tried to run, but it was impossible. The terrain was too uneven, and up ahead it was becoming far too steeply banked. I was going to have to practically climb up that – but if it led up and out onto the surface, then I was all for it. So I moved as quickly as I could, scrambling over and onto everything that was in my way, in a desperate attempt to escape.

Ahead of me, the ground split open, and I halted in my tracks. The ground wasn’t technically ground, but solid concrete, and it was being ripped apart from underneath like tissue paper. Chunks of gravel practically disintegrated or flew in every direction, and I finally got the first look at my attackers.

The claws were first: wide palms, with two large talons on the end, and two smaller thumb-like claws on either side. They grabbed hold of either side of the hole, and the rest of it emerged, practically slithering up like a snake. An angular, alien head sat atop a body that was humanoid only in the sense that it had two arms and legs… but the back legs had an animal bend to them, like the hind legs of a dog or a deathclaw. A tail was the last thing to emerge from the hole, swishing back and forth like a pendulum. Six glowing eyes stared at me, three on either side of its diamond wedge like head. Its arms, legs, back, and tail were covered in both scales and thousands of spikes; each one of the spikes ended in glowing points that looked just like the eyes.

It crouched down low on all fours over the hole when it saw me, opened its jaws… and then opened them again, revealing a lower jaw split down the middle, filled with row after row of teeth like a shark.

“Look out!” ED-E yelled, firing off a laser from overhead as the beast screeched and leapt at me. I ducked, letting go of the G36 with my cybernetic hand, and swinging in a wild arc above me. I felt a thump against the top of my fist… and didn’t bother to check on the result. Because another one of these things was coming out of the hole.

“Fuck!” I shouted practically on reflex, trying to run again. Another few inches, and it would’ve taken my head off – and I was still technically cloaked. Great. I grabbed hold of the rifle as I tried to leap from rock to rock, and aimed back at them. The end of the rifle flashed several times, the bark of the G36 illuminating the cavern for a few brief, precious seconds.

They didn’t roar. They screeched. An awful, nails-on-the-chalkboard sound, made worse by the constant clattering all around me. I didn’t know if I’d hit any of them… but they definitely didn’t like… the… muzzle…

…cowed by bright light and loud noises…

That’s what the flare guns were for, I finally realized. Why the lights in the Marked Men fortress were pointed down at the street, and why they all seemed to stay on the upper level. They were prepared for an attack from these… these tunnelers down below. And if they could burst up through solid concrete, then that meant they could emerge out of those holes from anywhere connected to solid earth!

“Shit!” I hissed through gritted teeth, refusing to slow for a second. I let off another burst from the G36, and it finally clicked dry. I had more ammo for it on me, but I hadn’t thought to reload before coming down here! I looked over my shoulder just in time to see another of those holes appear, and more of the bastards spill out. And then another hole. And then another. Dozens of them were clinging to the walls and ceiling, too, scuttling along behind me like insects.

I was about to reach into my duster for the flare gun – having finally discerned its purpose – when ED-E spoke up again.

“Friend_Courier! The Red Glare!”

“What?!” I yelled back, not understanding what he was getting at. I was too focused on trying to escape to understand.

“The projectiles are thermobaric explosives!” ED-E continued, flying backwards just above my head. “They are almost 100% fuel, and ignite the surrounding air! The reaction creates a sustained high-pressure shockwave and an explosion that will consume the available oxygen in any confined space!”

And here I thought I had the monopoly on risky, potentially suicidal, stupid ideas.

I momentarily stopped climbing, and spun to face the oncoming horde behind me. The way the staggering number of them were crawling over every surface to get to me, it was like I was looking at a swarm of wingless locusts, only growling and snarling and gnashing their teeth. I shrugged my shoulder, and grabbed the foregrip trigger on the Red Glare with my cybernetic hand, hoping that I’d be able to fire it one-handed like the anti-materiel rifle the other day. I wasn’t going to completely let go of the G36, and I didn’t have time to shoulder it properly. The approaching tunnelers were following me, but for some reason they weren’t rushing me – in fact, they seemed a bit cautious. Maybe the muzzle flashes from the G36 had been enough to unsettle them. With any luck, this would finish the job.

I aimed into the center of the horde as best I could, the back of the launcher resting on my shoulder perilously close to my head, and fired.

The rockets streaked through the air, practically blinding me. One after another, the screaming projectiles flew at the tunnelers… and then flew past them. Within seconds however, it didn’t matter. The explosions ripped through the rubble all around, and shockwave after shockwave cascaded through everything. Even as far away from the epicenter as I was, I could feel the force buffeting me. The small explosions from the individual rockets seem to coalesce and merge into one much, much, much larger explosion.

I turned and tried to run for the exit as fast as I could. I could hear the fire turning into a raging inferno, swirling behind me in a huge sucking backdraft. The tunnelers were screaming and screeching. At least it was light enough from the explosions that I didn’t need nightvision anymore. I kept going forward, clawing at every available handhold, hoping I was faster than the rapidly expanding inferno behind me, when I finally saw my salvation: a literal light at the end of the tunnel.

I redoubled my efforts, until the sounds of screeching and fire were met with the howl of dust storm winds. The light at the end of the tunnel got wider and brighter, and the wind got louder. And still I kept going.

The rubble finally gave way to (relatively) smoother tarmac, and I realized that I was finally out of that underground hell. Ahead of me, I could see the sun burning through the clouds, shining at just the right angle to be both a welcome relief from the darkened, tunneler infested underground and an annoyance at how fucking bright it was! Damnit!

As I climbed out of the underground and onto what appeared to be some kind of freeway, I cast one last glance behind me. The fire was still raging, but was no longer the all-consuming inferno that it was moments earlier… and down, in the darkened corners, I could see eyes staring back at me. They didn’t follow me to the surface… for now. But if what I feared was true, then come nightfall… no place on the ground would be safe.

I looked back at the sun, angled at just the right way to blast right into my face whenever I wanted to look out of the tunnel. It was almost dusk. The last rays of sun always seem to burn the hottest and the brightest right before dipping below the horizon… and the day was just about done.

“C’mon, ED-E,” I said, shouldering the Red Glare and taking the time to reload my rifle. “We’ve got to find some shelter above ground before nightfall…”

Silence.

“… ED-E?” I said, slowly turning to the eyebot. He was still as a statue, hovering in place and staring at me. Oh, fuck.

“There you are…” Ulysses’ voice boomed out of ED-E’s speaker.