Nobody will forget the night the skies over L1B burned, or all that was consumed in the maelstrom. But sometimes what is lost is not as horrific as what remains. Amid the melted cars, the ash, the charred bits of bone… are the things we leave behind.

THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND

The Nekropolis, Brimstone

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With a groan Dutch screwed both fists into his temples, as if with enough force he could squeeze the pain from his skull. Flecks of vomit stuck to his teeth, the stench of rotten eggs in the air made worse by the funk of his own belly acid. Wheezing hard he doubled over, dropped to one knee, retching until slimy threads drooled from his mouth and nose.

Gotta get home.

Far easier said than done, Dutch realized, sitting alone in the dark. There was no moonlight, only the glow of distant building lights to carve the street into smears of gloom and utter black. Dragging a stained sleeve across his face, Dutch tried to focus on the nearest silhouettes. A wilted antenna, a burned-out PTV, the entrance to a mine shaft. The pavement was rough beneath his palms and crunched as he shifted his weight. Dutch closed his fist and the layer of ash crumbled in his grasp, black dust sifting between his fingers.

Fire. The word appeared in his mind as both question and answer. The whole street looked like it had been blasted to hell and worked with a flamethrower. Even the ground was hot.

But I don’t remember a fire… As sick as he felt, Dutch was pretty sure he had not been burned, at least nowhere he could see. Nothing of this nightmare made any sense. He needed answers, to talk to somebody. Anybody.

Where’s Lenny… or Falco? And where the hell is Camber?

With a groan Dutch pushed himself upright and the world swayed as his reward. His work-worn Timberlands felt like size-12 cinderblocks as he stumbled lead-footed into a compressor, its sheetmetal surface every bit as crusted as the asphalt. Trails of black dust kicked up as his forearms slid across the top of the machine.

“C’mon Marine!” He hissed the words through clenched teeth. “Pull your shit together.” The sound scraped like sandpaper across his raw vocal chords before quickly succumbing to hoarseness. It had been twenty years since he left the Corps, but once a Marine, always a Marine. So make a fucking plan; figure out where you are.

He wasn’t in the yard, that much was certain. Even torched and twisted like some fucked-up impressionist painting, the factory where he worked every day would still be familiar. He’d recognize the layout of the yard, steel frames stacked in rows along the fenceline. The forklift…

Dutch’s right hand slid down to his hip, pawing for the Schrade clipped to his belt. The heavy five-inch knife wasn’t much in terms of a weapon but the feel of it in his hand was a comfort. Eyes peering into the darkness, he thumbed the blade open with a soft click. Oorah.

Bolstered ever so slightly, Dutch choked down a wad of spit and headed for the street corner, following a stretch of unbroken pavement. The city grid display was blackened like everything else, the once-smooth diode screen now warped and cracked. A dense smoke hugged the ground, thick and pungent, cutting his vision to no more than a hundred paces.

From what little Dutch could see, the city center of L1B had been reduced to ruin. Burned, busted, melted, whatever. He struggled to remember what happened when a dark thought crossed his mind. Could it be, was it possible that… that nobody else survived?

Dutch pushed himself into a foreward stride, wobbling one crunchy step after another like a drunk on Saturday night. Only the frequent collisions kept him upright as he pinballed off a wall, a trash bin, against a pile of rubble. In his focus to walk he passed the motionless figure, staggering a couple steps beyond before the shape of the man registered.

“Oh fuck, am I glad to see you—” Dutch croaked, then the words stalled on his lips. The figure stood motionless, a craquelure silhouette of dark pumice with arms raised in front of its face. The detail was unearthly; every button and fold of fabric rendered in porous black stone. Steam seeped from cracks in its chest and arms.

Dutch vaguely remembered some ancient myth about a creature whose gaze could turn a man to stone, but this was no fairy tale. Very real terror was etched into the statue’s petrified expression, gloss black eyes forever wide with fear.

Everything inside Dutch wanted to explode; his body tried to scream, puke and shit his drawers all at once, but the synapses all tangled up. What he did instead was run; a blind, arm-flailing dash.

He wasn’t sure how far he ran, how many twists and turns he had taken, how many charred bodies he passed along the way. Figures of men, women, even a dog. He knew his lungs burned, that his right hand ached from the white-knuckle grip on the Schrade.

But then, through the fog, he spotted something familiar. Tucker’s welding shop was still standing. T’s old pickup, or what was left of it, was still parked in the loading bay. Dutch looked left, right, matching details to memory.

Yeah, fuck yeah. He knew where he was! His own factory was just two blocks away, down that alley. Dutch plodded faster, the first shred of hope catching hold in his chest.

He’d covered half the distance when movement caught his eye, the unexpected drift of shadows overhead. Dutch skidded to a stop and looked up as two figures plodded along the raised walkway. One was huge; towering over the other, every few steps giving the smaller man a gentle nudge to move him on his way. They paused at a landing and Dutch shouted, waved his arms, but neither figure seemed to notice.

For a moment Dutch looked frantically for a rock, a can, something to throw. He grabbed a beer bottle in the gutter but it was fused to the ground and refused to budge. The two men were close enough that Dutch could almost make out their voices.

Why the hell can’t they hear me?

The answer was not what Dutch expected. Not what any sane mind would have expected. The big guy took the lead and started down the metal stairs. With each step, they became increasingly transparent. Before they reached the next landing, both men disappeared completely.

Dutch felt his blood turn to ice; the sensation drained from his limbs. This was not some trick of the smoke, he didn’t blink or miss something. The stairs were just as clear then as they are now. It was the men that vanished, the sound of their footsteps evanescing into the wind’s soft moan. Dutch didn’t believe in ghosts or gorgons but the shit he’d seen today whispered of both. Motionless, breathless, he stared at the walkway.

They just… faded away.

Dutch never took his eyes off the catwalk, finally edging forward until he saw the gold wings of Revel & York on the corrugated metal wall. He slipped through the side door, crossing the factory floor strewn with tools and out into the yard. That’s where he’d last seen the guys, he suddenly remembered. A distant glimmer sparked: they were palletizing a shipment of hangar frames. Falco was bitching about something. The weight; it was the weight of the beam.

Dutch rounded the back of the forklift and froze in his tracks. Lenny was there all right, standing alongside Falco and Camber. They were braced up against a three-meter section of T-beam.

No, Dutch realized sourly. They were… part of it. Shoulders passing through steel or… metal passing through flesh… Maybe both.

Dutch looked up, a jumble of sights and sounds coalescing in his mind. Something in the sky, something awful. His brow furrowed as he tried to put words to the sight. A ball of… of writhing voltage.

His nerves remembered how the night air had burned with a furnace-like heat. And that noise, that sucking howl like a rabid tornado. Dutch remembered how it tore at him, how it tried to peel him out of the forklift… peel him out of his own flesh. How he screamed as he held on for all he was worth, until the relentless force tore him away and swept him into the maelstrom.

Tears streaking his face, Dutch stared into the distance. Even darker images lingered on the edge of his mind, the fading remnants of nightmare. Tall demonic figures with leathery hides, eyes that burned like embers in the gloom. Monsters of teeth and tusks and claws that guarded the door to hell with wicked blades.

Dutch pushed the nightmare from his mind and gazed mournfully at the forklift, at the charred figure inside clutching the wheel in a deathgrip. He understood now, knew the ash-black remnants of Timberland boots were size twelve, that a Marine Corps tattoo once sprawled down the left arm, and that the knife fused into the charred belt was a Schrade.

And with that he knew… he was never getting home.