The air felt lighter the farther Chris walked. Yet, smoke and dust was blending turning everything close into a haze that made distance meaningless. Somewhere behind him, the city still pulsed red, that column of black fire rising through the clouds like a signal from hell.
He followed a stretch of broken road that ended at the chain-link perimeter of the old train yard. Half the fence was gone, torn upward like something massive had crawled through. Freight cars lay scattered, some upright, others toppled on their sides, their undercarriages glowing faintly from reflected firelight. The whole place looked like a graveyard built from iron and ash.
Chris slipped through the gap, pistol drawn, backpack tight. The gravel crunched beneath his boots. The air smelt of hot metal and rust. He moved between the boxcars, his flashlight flicking on in short bursts just enough to see, never enough to be seen he kept repeating in his mind.
The shard in his bag gave a faint pulse. It wasn't constant just one slow thump against his spine, a reminder that it hadn't stopped since he found it.
He froze. There was a sound, a soft uneven, dragging of something coming from between two overturned cars ahead. He crouched low, raising his pistol. The smell hit his nostrils next . It smelled like meat left in heat too long.
Then movement! A body steppedor rather, jerked into view. It looked human at first glance, but its spine arched backward too far, skin blistered and split in long strips that hadn't bled right. Its face was torn down one side, jaw slack, eyes black and glassy. The way it walked made no sense. It's knees twisting inward like a marionette that had forgotten its strings.
Chris forgot to breath. The shard pulsed harder against his back.The thing turned toward him, its neck creaking like wood under strain. He fired once. The shot cracked the silence surrounding the area apart. The bullet struck clean through its forehead. The body stopped, dropped and started convulsing until it finally stopped.
For a moment, nothing happened. Chris refused to move trained on the creature until
a faint blue glow shimmered in the air just above the corpse.
+2 XP
The letters hung there weightless, soft, and silent. Then they blinked out. With the shard on his back stopping its pulsing. Chris lowered the gun in shock with his chest tight, whispering to no one,
"What the hell…"
He started forward, careful avoiding the body, checking corners without thinking. Every few seconds, the shard gave another faint beat steady this time, like it was listening to the world. A metallic clang rang out farther down the tracks. Chris cut his flashlight and dropped low behind a wheel assembly. Another sound followed quick footsteps on gravel, a voice that wasn't trying to hide.
"Hello?" It called out
Acting like it was a human.
Chris knew he shouldn't respond but his nerves were shot so he called back carefully, "You alive?"
The voice froze. Then a woman stepped out from behind a derailed freight car, both hands raised. Her hair was streaked with soot, and a heavy wrench hung from her belt.
"Don't shoot," she said. "Please."
Chris lowered the weapon slightly, but not all the way. "You alone?"
She nodded fast. "Yeah. I've been hiding here since it started. My name's Jess."
"Chris," he said simply.
Her eyes darted toward the corpse behind him. "You… you did that?" He nodded once.
"God…" Her voice cracked. "They used to be people." "Still look like them," he said quietly.
She hugged her arms tighter. "There were more of us here. Mechanics, guards, some passengers who tried to climb the fences. But when the sky broke, they" She stopped. "Not all of them died , they seemed to change"
Suddenly, another sound came from behind her. A dull thump, like something dropping from a height. Jess flinched. Chris motioned her down behind the boxcar.
A second body crawled across the tracks ahead of them. This one was worse skin blackened and sloughing off in patches, arms lengthened unnaturally like the bones had melted and stretched before cooling again. It dragged itself forward on its fingertips, jaw working soundlessly. Chris's chest tightened. The shard flared hot through the canvas, warning him before the thing was dangerous.
He whispered, "Stay still."The corpse twitched once, head snapping toward them, then began dragging itself at an insane speed with its two arms. Chris fired. The bullet caught the monster in the shoulder, making it spin sideways. It slammed into a steel post. The back of its skull hitting hard enough to fold its neck sideways. The wet crack echoed once. The body collapsed and didn't move again. Another faint blue glow shimmered above the corpse.
+2 XP
Just like before. It blinked out after two seconds. Jess followed his line of sight but saw nothing. "What is it?"
"Another thing," he said quickly. "Let's move before more show up."
She nodded, still shaking.
They crossed deeper into the yard, moving between derailed tankers and empty cars. Chris's flashlight flickered over a control office near the far fence. The windows were warped, the glass bending like it was still melting. The walls themselves seemed to ripple, bulging inward, then outward again.
Jess whispered, "That's where the others went."He watched it for a few seconds, the shard beginning to warm again almost burning his back. "Not anymore." He warned
She nodded, eyes glassy.
Inside the office, a faint shape moved near the window just a silhouette catching their attention as if beckoning them to come, still and watching. Chris blinked once, and it was gone. He turned away shuddering"Let's keep moving."
They passed a broken freight door that had been twisted into the ground. On the other side, they found a small emergency box with a cracked water bottle, a flare gun, and a box of old rags. Chris grabbed what he could carry. While Jess found a crowbar and looped it through her belt. She tried to steady her breathing. "Do you think anyone else is still out there?"
"Maybe."
"What if this" she gestured around them, to the warped cars and broken sky"is everywhere?"
Then we find the edge of it," he said.
They moved toward the far end of the yard. The shard's glow softened, cooling from warning heat to a faint hum. Up ahead, a faint orange light blinked from a tower. Underneath it came a weak, broken voice through a loudspeaker.
"survivors *static* east tunnel *static*shelter *static* bring weapons"
Jess stopped walking. "Do you believe that is real?"
"I do not know, but I hope it is." he said.
"Or not." Jess replied still thinking of the thing that was in the window earlier.
"Yeah," Chris agreed. "But it's something."
They reached the outer fence. Behind them, the fog from earlier began to drift across the tracks again, crawling low like smoke on water. For a second, Chris saw movement inside it faces, arms, impossible shapes that didn't line up with what they should've been. The shard flared hot one last time, then cooled. He didn't look back again.
"East tunnel," he said.
Jess gripped her crowbar tighter. "East tunnel."
They climbed through the fence and disappeared into the darkness, leaving the train yard to its silence.