“Unlucky that that’s the only time you can see them.” He glanced at his hands; it was just bright enough to see the dark crusts of blood on his palms and fingers where jags of bark had cut him. Replacing his armor, piece by piece, and the god-killing knife, he said, “Anyway, that’s the direction they’ll be going. We can meet them where the shoots of the ghost flower vines join.”

“Lead on, then.”

Uncomfortable with her at his back, he obeyed, finding the shoot after several more minutes of thrashing around in the dark, once having to stop himself from shrieking in terror as a cloud of mutated bats whistled past, their skin rubbery and, had this been day, probably colorful.

After locating the line of white-glowing blooms, he was able to follow the floral trail easily enough, even as it dipped and bobbed over the undulating landscape, threading between great trees or passing through thick undergrowth he had to go around. Always he found the line of ghost flowers again, wondering if Layanna, Janx and Hildra were doing the same. Had all the villagers truly died? The Nisaar would likely be overseeing the bonfire that they’d made of the village, making sure every last maggot-riddled person, man, woman and child, burned. Some had escaped, though, which is what had forced both Avery’s and Sheridan’s respective parties into flight. Some might be still be out here. Wincing, he wondered if the maggots could infest animals as easily as they could people.

He wasn’t even aware of it happening it occurred so gradually, but bit by bit he realized it ...

The Atomic Jungle was ending.

The jungle itself went on, of course, but it steadily grew less and less infected, and then at last he and Sheridan passed through what was to all appearances (and it was still very dark, so that was limited) a normal, mundane jungle. No squid vines, or jellyfish trees. No great banks of coral or predators with lamp-lures. Just lush, thick vegetation, with the stench of rotten vegetable matter and flowering blooms and sweet resin all around.

“What does it mean?” Sheridan said.

“I don’t understand. We’re not any further from the nearest infected river than we were, at least if my memory of the maps is correct.”

“It is or we’re both wrong.”

They paused to study their surroundings, then ventured on, but now they moved more closely together, as if expecting ambush. Somehow the termination of the alien surroundings heightened their trepidation, not lessened it; they had come on something unexpected. Nonsensical, even.

To compound this, the line of glowing flowers continued on, leading further and further into the strangely banal jungle.

“Why didn’t the flowers end?” Sheridan said. “Unless ...”

He nodded. “Their—well, strangeness—wasn’t caused by the Atomic Sea infection, but something else. Lt. Mailos talked about there being something old out here, something that may have caused the Nisaar to mutate long ago. I don’t really believe they evolved due to any ... well, extradimensional, I suppose ... any extradimensional stimulation, but those flowers certainly did. There is nothing natural about them.”

“I thought all extradimensional phenomena originated from the sea.”

“So did I.”

Bugs chirped in the bushes, an oddly soothing sound. Further off, something large grunted, and Avery wondered if regular tigers were any less deadly than infected ones. He saw Sheridan’s hand rest on her gun butt and was reassured, but only a little.

“The flowers are used in alchemy,” she mused.

“Yes. It makes one wonder how many other alchemical substances derive from pre-Atomic extradimensional phenomena. Whatever caused the flowers to mutate could have created those other substances, too.”

“But those things can be found throughout the world, and the flower only grows here.”

“It’s a puzzle, I grant you that. Unless—”

She switched off her flashlight, leaving him blind.

“Hush,” she said. “I think I see something ahead.”

After giving her eyes a minute to adjust, she inched forward through a wall of undergrowth, and he followed, feeling suddenly nervous. She paused ahead of him, peering out behind a thick tree, and he joined her. Ahead he saw what she had sensed so much sooner than him; large structures, buildings, looming out of the jungle just before them. By the light of the two visible moons, Avery saw a great structure blocking out most of his view, but dimly on either side, and just visible above it, he could see what looked like domes and towers, arching bridges ... all overgrown by ivy and riddled with trees and shrubs.

A lost city, half reclaimed by the jungle.

And by its strange angles and over-large dimensions, it was most certainly a non-human city.

“Look,” Sheridan said, pointing to another line of vines leading straight into the metropolis.

“And another,” he said, pointing in the other direction.

“The flowers come from here,” she said, excitement just discernible in her voice. “This is it, Doctor. This is our destination.”

Chapter 9

Avery half expected Sheridan to kill him then, and he hunched his shoulders, preparing to ward off a blow. His armor might save him from her first attack, unless she was willing to risk a shot, and then she had only to lift up his visor and ...

“Don’t be absurd,” she told him, reading his body language. She rose from her crouch and shuffled off toward the building directly ahead.

At a loss, Avery followed.

“What is your … ?” he started, but she shushed him again and pressed her back against the rounded wall of the building. He followed her example.

She peered around the corner, then turned back to him. “Two men just passed by at the other end of an alley.”

“What would men be doing here?”

“I have no idea. Could the ruins be inhabited?”

“They wouldn’t be ruins, then, would they? What we need is some height so we can scout out the lay of the land.”

They commenced searching for a doorway into this building or the next. None presented themselves, and Avery didn’t feel like investigating every structure of the city’s perimeter looking for ingress. He pointed up to what looked like a window on the second or third story, one of many. Thick vines snaked up the wall toward them, thick and knotty. He grabbed one and attempted to shake it, just to be sure. It didn’t budge.

“It’ll do,” Sheridan said.

She began peeling off her armor, and he couldn’t help but watch. She wore very little underneath, save some ungainly pads that prevented rubbing, but these she removed too, as they got in the way of natural movement without the weight of the armor to hold them in place. What little she had left resembled underwear, with a belt cinched around her hips holding a gun and a radio; that was it.

He swallowed, helpless to admire her lithe form. With her hair longer than he had ever seen it before, sweaty and tangled, her face flushed with exertion, her full lips as well, and a spark in her eye, she was a compelling sight, and when she saw his admiration something mischievous entered her face.

“Your turn, Doctor,” she said. “You can’t climb wearing that.”

Suddenly nervous with a tension that had nothing to do with the dangers facing him, he starting removing his armor under her watchful gaze, aware that he was tanned and as muscular as he’d ever been, fit after all of his adventuring. When he was done, he wore more clothing than she did, but with her staring at him he didn’t feel like it.

“After you,” she said, indicating the vine.

He smiled thinly, touching the knife he’d thrust through his belt, a knife too easily reached by someone he couldn’t see.