Hood: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (American Rebirth Series Book 1) by Evan Pickering

Author:Evan Pickering [Pickering, Evan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Evan Pickering
Published: 2016-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14 – Descent

The beams of light from Hood’s and Whiskey's guns danced inside the dark subway, crossing occasionally as they scanned back and forth. Their footsteps echoed with a metallic clank on each step down the escalators. Inside the metro, the ceiling was like a huge concave waffle, rectangular indents running the length of the walls. Hood remembered thinking that as a kid. His familiarity with the station only made the broken landscape harder to take in. This couldn't be home.

They walked around the same bend as he had hundreds of times, down another set of escalators. The same escalators he lost his Hot Wheels truck in when he was a boy, crying the whole train ride home. Maybe it was still down there, somewhere, covered in dust.

It was pitch black except for the flashlights. Piles of refuse and makeshift sleeping mats hid along the walls. The air was dry and acrid, like old dust in a bone-dry river bed. There was no sound but their footsteps, which echoed in the dark so loudly that he was sure people in Georgetown could hear them. He felt like an invader in a tunnel on some foreign planet, as if some giant bug monster would jump out and eat them, something out of Starship Troopers.

Hood exhaled slowly, closing his eyes. You're in no danger. At least not from the architecture, anyway. The place isn't going to collapse on you. It isn't going to collapse on you. He repeated, hands starting to sweat.

The long causeway toward the trains was littered with signs of life: Empty food wrappers, water bottles, beer cans, dirty newspapers and even an old ratty couch someone had brought down. Much of the refuse looked as though it had been torn apart.

Whiskey held the light on something on the floor and approached it cautiously: a puddle next to a metal subway bench. As he got close, he knelt down and shone the light around them. Hood sighted down his rifle and scanned the empty subway. Nothing was there.

"Is it blood?" Kerry asked.

"Keep it down," Whiskey whispered. "Speak only loud enough to be heard." He sniffed at the air, then touched the liquid, looked at it in the light, and smelled it again.

"It's water," Whiskey said quietly. "Clean water." Whiskey pointed his shotgun directly above them. The ceiling had no leaks; no droplets oozed through the cracks.

"Someone was here," Hood replied in a hushed tone.

"We don't really know that. This place looks as empty as the rest of the city. I think we should go back," Kerry whispered.

"We're not going back," Whiskey responded gruffly.

"We don't even know if the way through is clear. It could be a dead end," Kerry retorted. "We are literally and figuratively in the dark."

Whiskey turned around and pointed his shotgun into her face, the light blinding her. She shielded her eyes.

"I don't know why you're still here, or what exactly you intend to do with the rest of your short life, but you would be dead already if it weren't for Hood.

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