x
One by one, the six remaining castaways clambered from the battered electric cart, their limbs stiff from the ride and their nerves frayed by the loss of young Barry. Dust clung to their clothes, and the tunnel still echoed faintly with the ringing residue of unnatural energies. But up ahead, a fragile promise glimmered—an oval pool of light spilling onto the cracked pavement like a spotlight on a stage long abandoned.
They approached cautiously, boots crunching over grit, rubble, and forgotten relics. The light came from above, filtering through a great rupture in the tunnel's ceiling where the stonework had long since caved in. Chunks of broken concrete, girders, and rusted wire framed a ragged aperture. Through it, the sun bled gently down, the golden rays made hazy by generations of dirt and debris clogging the breach.
All six stood staring upward, their heads tilted back, faces squinting as they tried to adjust to the unfamiliar brightness.
Dan shaded his eyes and exhaled. “That’s sunlight… that’s got to be the surface.”
Mark Wilson stepped forward. “We might be under a park or an old plaza. Wherever it is, that’s our way out.”
Betty turned slowly to Steve. “Can we climb it? If there’s a shaft or even a slope—”
Valerie cut in, her voice brimming with cautious hope. “It’s real. It has to be real. That’s not an illusion.”
Fitzhugh, rubbing the grime from his cheeks, muttered, “If it leads to open sky, I’ll name my next investment portfolio after it.”
Steve looked up one more time, then at the others. “Whatever it is, it’s the first real sign of daylight we’ve seen since the Underfolk grabbed us.”
They stood a little straighter, the light brushing their faces like a memory of freedom. For a moment, no one said anything more. They simply watched the flickering motes of dust dance in the sunbeam, as if trying to remember what the world above truly felt like.
Steve jumped up on some fallen concrete and leaped across to an embankment of rubble.
Fitzhugh was the first to say it—blunt and bracing. “We can’t just leave the boy down here like a sack of potatoes! We have to go back!”
Valerie’s voice quivered with emotion. “But where? He vanished, Fitz! Right in front of us! How do you chase a shimmer?”
Betty folded her arms tight over her chest, her voice soft but firm. “He’s just a child. We can’t leave him. We can’t.”
Dan shook his head slowly, looking to Steve. “If we stay down here much longer, none of us are getting out.”
Mark added grimly, “This place could collapse at any second. You all saw what those beams did. We might be chasing ghosts.”
Steve turned to them, eyes narrowed, and jaw clenched. “You think I don’t want to go after him?” He jabbed a finger toward the dim expanse of tunnel behind them. “I want to rescue him, but where do we even look—?”
A thunderous WHUMP echoed through the tunnel, and without warning, a blast erupted nearby. A hail of dirt and rock fragments showered the castaways, stinging their faces and peppering their clothes with grit and debris. Betty cried out, shielding her eyes. Fitzhugh dropped to the ground with a strangled yelp. Dan instinctively threw an arm in front of Valerie.
Looking back down the tunnel, they saw four Underfolkers running toward them. One stood still and from his eyes shot out another blast of light, which exploded against the rocks behind which they huddled.
Steve spotted three more white-clad Underfolkers running out of the darkness; thy stopped and stood very still. Three more explosions in quick succession, showered down still more dirt, and Steve shouted to the group.
"Move! Everybody, up the slope---now!"
Fitzhugh scrambled to his feet, panic overtaking his usual pomposity. "But what about Barry?!"
Valerie's voice cracked with desperation. "We can't leave him here!"
Betty clutched at her chest, eyes darting wildly behind them. "He's somewhere back there---he's got to be!"
Dan spun around, eyes blazing. "Steve! We need to find him before the whole place collapses!"
Steve was already on his hands and knees, scrabbling up the broken incline of earth and twisted rebar. Grit stung his palms as he clawed for purchase, glancing back with eyes that burned. “There’s no choice!” he panted, “We can’t help him if we all get buried! We’ll come back—we will! But right now—MOVE!”
Suddenly, a sixth explosion ripped through the chamber behind them with a brutal roar. The shockwave slammed into Steve mid-climb, knocking him sideways. He landed hard with a grunt, skidding across the slope on his shoulder, but somehow—miraculously—rose again, trembling but unbroken. He turned to the others, eyes fierce, voice rough but resolute.
“We’re not abandoning him. We will come back for Barry. I swear it.”
Desperation lending strength to trembling limbs, the group bent low, scooping up jagged, baseball-sized stones from the broken earth. One after another, they hurled them with reckless force at the gold-robed figures advancing from the shadows—creatures whose glowing eyes pulsed with an unnatural inner fire.
Steve let fly first, grunting with the effort. The stone whistled through the dust-heavy air and missed its mark—yet struck another Underfolker square in the side. The figure staggered with a grunt, doubling over, one pale hand clutching its stomach as it dropped to one knee.
Dan was already throwing again.29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8hkdfq3MVX
“Keep moving!” he barked, his voice tight.
The others followed suit. Valerie lobbed a rock high, and Betty’s arm arced one forward with surprising accuracy. Fitzhugh, swearing under his breath, grabbed two at once and flung them wildly, one of them striking a white-clad mutant in the shoulder with a sickening thwack. The figure reeled and stumbled, a strange high-pitched hum escaping its throat.
Still running, the group launched more of the crude missiles as they climbed, tossing whatever stones they could snatch from the rubble-strewn slope. Several connected—groans and wheezes rising from the Underfolk as the barrage disrupted their approach.
Then, with no warning, a seventh eye-beam tore through the haze—a sharp line of blinding white that struck Dan full in the chest. He flew back with a cry, landing hard on the slope.
“Dan!” Valerie screamed, already reaching for him.
But Dan, coughing and gritting his teeth, rolled to his side and forced himself up.29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtbAQ3i9ip2
“I’m okay—just keep going!” he growled, stumbling after them, smoke curling from the singed front of his shirt.
"Come on! We'll roll rocks on them!" Steve shouted.
A sudden crack of pure energy split the rising air, followed by a flash so bright it bleached the scene in white for an instant—then came the boom, and the flying debris.
The blast struck just behind Valerie as she scrambled upward on all fours. The concussion sent her tumbling down the rocky slope with a choked scream, her limbs flailing before she landed hard on her back against a slab of concrete. Dust curled up around her motionless form.
“Valerie!” Betty cried out, beginning to turn back—until Steve shouted for her to keep going.
Valerie blinked slowly, dazed, her chest rising and falling. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came. Blood ran from a scrape on her temple, matting her hair.
Below, from a fissure in the stone where he had hidden, a white-clad figure emerged. He moved with eerie calm, his long robes flowing like mist as he climbed silently over the wreckage. His face was unreadable beneath the sheen of his golden headgear—the plastanium crests that crowned each Underfolker like a bishop’s mitre forged from radiation and madness.
He stopped at the base of the slope directly beneath the opening above, as if waiting. He did not move. His eyes began to pulse.
Then the humming began—soft at first, then rising to a teeth-grating drone that made the air tremble. It emanated from deep within the figure, from whatever cruel engine beat in place of his heart. The others turned their heads sharply toward it, the sound paralyzing in its intensity.
But Steve clenched his jaw and pushed forward, crawling back toward Valerie.29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDEtABYpfCV
“Not leaving her,” he muttered, even as the light began to gather in the Underfolker’s eyes once more.
One by one, the six castaways lunged for the debris littering the incline—each finding their own weapon amid the wreckage. Bent rebar, rusted rods, jagged braces of twisted steel, once part of the ancient tunnel's skeleton. With gritted teeth and raw fury, they hurled them, hammers from a forgotten war.
The first length of iron shrieked through the air and struck the Underfolker across the arm. He staggered—but his eyes blazed open, unleashing twin beams of blinding white.
Just then, two more pieces of steel slammed into his chest and side, one from Dan, one from Betty. He stumbled back, but the beams had already fired—piercing upward in a perfect line toward the roof.
The already-cracked lip of the tunnel gave a groan, then split apart with a thunderous crack. An avalanche of dirt, rocks, and time-rotted concrete came crashing down like judgment from the heavens. The Underfolker had only enough time to raise his arms before he was lost in the cascade.
“Come on!” Steve shouted over the chaos, waving both arms at the others, his voice ragged. “Let’s go, now!”
But no one answered. The group stood frozen, staring at the fresh mound where the figure had stood, as if expecting him to rise again.
With a curse, Steve turned and snatched up two massive stones, grunting as he pitched them deep into the tunnel’s throat. They clanged and clattered—and then came another collapse, a thunderous, choking deluge of rubble that sealed the Underfolker’s fate.
Dust hung in the air like breath.
Steve turned back to the others; eyes fierce.
“I said move! That won’t hold forever!”
A deep, low humming rose through the dust-choked air—more felt than heard at first, like a vibration in their bones. Then came the light: two thin, angled beams, slicing through the settling grit, white-hot and seething. They struck the rock below and to the left of the fleeing group, erupting in twin explosions that echoed like cannon fire.
Chunks of ancient masonry blasted outward, sending stone shrapnel across the slope. The ground shuddered underfoot, and a deep, wet crack sounded overhead—followed by an unnerving scraping, like the sound of rusted iron being torn apart by unseen claws.
And then it happened.
With a noise like the end of the world, a massive section of the tunnel’s roof gave way. The collapse came in waves: boulders, gravel, rebar-twisted slabs all plunging downward in a choking, apocalyptic roar. Dust mushroomed out like smoke from a detonation, and the entire chamber trembled as if the mountain itself had awoken.
The group broke into a sprint, lungs burning, hearts pounding. Behind them, the light was gone—swallowed by the falling stone.
A great puff of dust erupted behind them as the tunnel finished collapsing, exploding upward like a geyser of powdered stone and pulverized age. The air turned thick and unbreathable in an instant, and the castaways coughed and gagged, eyes watering, as they stumbled forward over crumbling concrete and loose rubble, groping toward the faint sunlight outside.
They clambered out one by one, skin streaked gray, lungs rasping with each inhale, boots slipping on the uneven ground—but they didn’t stop until they reached the base of a weathered retaining wall where the tunnel mouth had once yawned.
And then—they noticed.
Someone was missing.
Steve turned sharply, squinting back through the haze. “Fitzhugh!” he shouted, his voice raw with grit and panic. “Fitzhugh, answer me! Where are you?!”
But only the wind and the settling dust answered.
Through the haze of dust and the rasping in his lungs, Steve heard it—a low, pitiful groan, half-swallowed by the rumble still echoing in the earth. He stumbled forward, coughing and spitting grit, hands out like a blind man in a sandstorm. Another groan came, this time closer, and then—his boot struck something soft.
Steve dropped to his knees and clawed at the dirt, his fingers sinking into a mound that moved beneath him.
"Fitzhugh!" he gasped.
A pair of dirt-smeared hands flailed upward weakly as Steve scooped him out, dislodging a cascade of rubble and thick, clumping dust. Fitzhugh’s body was nearly entombed, only his face barely visible beneath the crust of collapsed tunnel. Steve hoisted him up like a sack of grain, knocking away several pounds of debris as Fitzhugh blinked, then grimaced.
"I assure you, Captain Burton, I am quite all right," Fitzhugh muttered hoarsely. "Only… mildly compressed."
Steve gave a relieved snort, half-cough, half-chuckle, then turned toward the silhouette of the others standing just outside the ruined mouth of the tunnel. “All right! Everybody move! Put on as much supersonic speed as you’ve got!"
He crouched beside Fitzhugh, looping an arm under the man's shoulders and hauling him upright with a grunt. Fitzhugh staggered at first, blinking the grime from his eyes, legs wobbling like they weren't quite convinced they belonged to him anymore.
“Easy,” Steve said, steadying him with a firm grip on his arm. “Just lean on me. We’re almost there.”
They climbed the last stretch together, scrambling over jagged slabs of broken concrete and twisted rebar. Steve kept one hand clamped around Fitzhugh’s forearm, practically dragging him when the terrain grew steep. The air was thick and choking, but with every step forward the curtain of dust began to lift, thinning in streaks of smoky light.
At last, they crested the rubble and joined the rest of the group on firmer ground. The wind, faint but persistent, carried the last of the dust away in swirls.
They all turned as one, peering back into the yawning ruin of the tunnel.
Where once the white-robed Underfolkers had stood—silent, watching, and terrible—there was now only a mound of fresh, loose earth, still slumping and shifting under its own weight. The place where the enemy had waited was gone, swallowed in the collapse, entombed by the very structure they had haunted.
No one said a word at first. Just the sound of ragged breathing and the soft, gritty whisper of settling dust.29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvC8Y2rkpCr
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvyO8hhhFVk
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoVGnPPYWCZ
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCgOa1NFzxB
Cornelius put down the book he was reading and shambled over to Zira, putting a comforting arm around her frail body. "Don't worry, dear. As my grandmother Steffa used to say, 'It's always darkest before the dawn." He patted his wife's back. "Don't worry about Blue-Eyes, Zira. We helped him to escape, didn't we? And I think, wherever he is, there will be others to help him."
Zira patted her husband's hand on her arm and smiled bravely up at him. "Dear Cornelius, you are always such a comfort." Then her face clouded. "Cornelius, could it be that our concern for the humanoid goes beyond our behavioral studies and our liking for him? Do we perhaps see in him some possible help for our sim....?"
She put her hand to her mouth. She and Cornelius stared, blinking, at each other. Her idea was a disturbing one and had many implications that might be dangerous for the two of them.29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡha7NnBu6NO
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡICphRaIFnU
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU3DDkUFf8i
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt1Fhpj4rDv
The group stood in silence at the edge of the caved-in tunnel, a heap of broken stone and crumbled concrete sealing off the way they’d come. The air was thin, dry, and furnace-hot, the sun overhead like a white eye pressed too close. All around them stretched the desert—flat and endless—its cracked, iron-hard surface shimmering under the heat. The wind offered no comfort, only waves of scorched air that stung the skin and filled their mouths with the taste of dust.
Mark shaded his eyes with a hand. “Where… are we?”
Valerie’s voice was low, tight. “This can’t be Earth. Not anymore.”
Betty stepped back from the wreckage. “It’s all gone. Everything. No cities. No roads.”
Steve turned in a slow circle, lips pressed in a grim line. “No signs of the known world at all.”
Fitzhugh, his suit jacket now more dust than fabric, stared out into the desert, dumbfounded. “This—this was Metropolis, U.S.A. I saw the maps. The monuments.” He paused, voice rising in disbelief. “Where the devil’s the Atlantic Ocean?!”
Dan exhaled hard, his jaw set. “We’re going to have to get Barry back,” he said. “Somehow.”
Steve gave a slow nod, eyes fixed toward the collapsed tunnel. “He’s safe for now,” he said softly. “As safe as he can be... considering.”
A hush fell over them, broken only by the rasp of the wind and the shifting sand underfoot.
Then Steve stiffened. He squinted westward, hand up again to block the glare. “Something’s coming,” he muttered. A smear of dust was forming on the horizon, a spreading fan of movement against the stillness.
Within moments, they could see the forms emerging through the haze—huge metal shapes, growing clearer with each passing second. Treaded machines. Rigid, industrial silhouettes. Boxy armored vehicles. Trucks. Tanks. And something worse atop many of them—figures with banners, rifles, and glinting helms.
“Ape Army,” Steve said grimly. “Come on,” he barked, motioning to the others. “Behind the rocks—move!”
They scrambled for the cluster of sandstone boulders just downhill, crouching low behind them as the grinding thunder of treads and engines drew closer. They watched in stunned silence as the column rumbled across the desert floor, dozens of vehicles strong, banners snapping in the wind.
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9CHFrfbhsB
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWsUQ0ppUGh
General Urko picked up his radio as his command jeep bumped along across the desert. "Urko to all commands! The escaped humanoid and the Underfolk must be exterminated! Shoot on sight!"29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxRi1YkGUsS
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXb3XKwxF50
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPOZGyZRMSx
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2n5SZBjAXX
The group lingered behind the rocks, squinting toward the rising dust cloud as it spread across the desert like a bruise. The distant rumble was constant now, an earthquake that never broke the ground but lived in the air—closer with every breath. One by one, they stood, eyes wide, hands shading their faces as they edged from cover.
Valerie pressed a hand to her brow. “It’s not turning away…”
“No,” said Dan, voice grim. “It’s coming straight for us.”
Betty glanced around, hugging herself. “So what do we do? We can’t stay here.”
Steve didn’t answer right away. He stepped ahead of the others, boots crunching in the hardened crust of the earth. The sun flared on his sweat-slicked face as he stared down the coming dust storm of machines.
Fitzhugh exhaled shakily. “There must be a civilization left. Someone to reason with. Right?”
Steve slowly shook his head. “Whatever’s in that column... it won’t be anything we knew. Nothing we’ve seen since falling into this place has been.” His voice was quiet, and more to himself than to the others. “This isn’t 1983 anymore. It looks like Earth, but it’s not our world. That ended a long time ago.”
The others were silent. The wind whispered over the broken land, tugging at their clothes, stinging their eyes with grit.
Jeff turned to Steve. “Then what do we do?”
Steve didn’t flinch. His gaze never left the storm of war barreling toward them. “We move. We hide. We watch. We survive. That’s all we’ve got now.”
And with that, he turned west—toward the unknown—and started walking. The rest followed, quietly, their footprints trailing in the dust behind them.
