Chapter 6: Under the Clouds, Monsters Rise

The effects of nuclear explosions, even after centuries, had not fully faded; the clouds were thick.

Sometimes the sky glows green at night. Old-timers say it’s the ghosts of the bombs, still burning. The air crackles with leftover radiation.

Those clouds, so heavy they couldn’t be parted, likely still carried intense radiation—even satellite signals couldn’t penetrate.

It’s like driving through a fog bank made of poison. Nobody lingers under those clouds for long. My Geiger counter clicked nonstop.

White Dragon had to fly below the clouds, so speed had to be slow, or risk crashing into mountains or ruins.

Simon cursed the terrain, Peter checked the maps. Every hour felt like a gamble, like driving blind on a midnight highway.

Samuel suddenly appeared beside me, no idea when he’d woken up.

He moved so quietly, I jumped. He grinned, eyes still half-asleep, voice gravelly: "Missed the stars out here."

He said he hadn’t seen the outside world for a long time, and suddenly felt nostalgic.

"Used to be, you could see the stars out here," he murmured, voice low. "Now it’s just bones and shadows."

The scenery below was different from around the sanctuary.

It was worse than the stories. Every patch of ground looked haunted. The land was barren, glowing faint green, lifeless.

If you stared long enough, you’d swear the ground pulsed. It made your skin crawl, like walking through a haunted national park.

Hyena-like animals ran across the ground, constantly searching for corpses to gnaw; their bodies mutated too.

They moved in packs, eyes shining like headlights. Some limped, others ran on twisted legs. Some looked like wolves, others like coyotes, but all wrong.

Some hyenas had two or three heads, others had irregular bones jutting out, piercing their flesh.

I watched one rip apart its own tail, fighting for scraps. Survival’s brutal out here. Reminded me of old roadkill on Route 66, only these were still moving.

Deer running on the plains were just skeletons and scraps of torn skin.

They moved like ghosts, bones clattering, skin trailing behind like ribbons. Like elk stripped down to nothing but bone and glowing hearts.

A heart glowing green pulsed in their ribcages made of bone.

Every beat sent a shiver through the ground. It was like the land itself was alive, haunted by old dreams.

These deer didn’t eat grass; they hunted hyenas, wild boar, or humans in packs.

Samuel snorted. "That’s the real food chain now."

Samuel said this was the real apocalypse; the area around the sanctuary was too clean, people had forgotten the horror.

"Folks back home think they’re safe. Out here, you learn real quick what’s hunting you."

As we spoke, White Dragon was suddenly shrouded in shadow.

The temperature dropped, the light faded. I felt my heartbeat spike, sweat running down my back.

A giant skeletal crow in the sky blocked out the sun, its two heads both staring at White Dragon.

It was bigger than a jetliner, wings spreading across the horizon. Both heads screeched, and the sound rattled my teeth. Cockpit alarms blared.

Peter immediately returned to the gun position; the rest of us fastened our seatbelts.

Simon barked orders, Peter’s fingers danced over the controls. I gripped the armrest, knuckles white, heart pounding in my chest.

As the gun slowly raised, Peter yelled at Simon:

"Simon! Circle around back, battle start!"

Simon slammed the controls, White Dragon spun. The crow shrieked, swooping in for the kill.