Crawler’s Log — Day 3, Run #16

  Quiet isn’t safe. Quiet means death is waiting. Noise means life like groaning engines, grinding wheels, howling wind. But that gorge up ahead? Dead silent. No whistle. No rattle. Not even vultures or strays.

  Mercy whispered about this place, said the Old World still has a hold here. Flick scouted ahead. There were no tracks, no lights, no heat signatures. Still, Mercy’s words made the hairs on my arms stand.

  — Patch

  The Leviathan rumbled toward the gorge, her wheels grinding over the bone-dry sand. Up ahead the gorge rose slow against the horizon. Slabs of old concrete stacked out of the earth like rows of teeth, rebar jutted from the edges, twisted with red rust, reaching out like claws. Here and there, the bones of the old road showed through the sand. Cracked asphalt and half-buried paint lines. They were ghosts of lanes that once carried the world.

  “Highway,” Mercy said softly. Her prayer beads clicked in her hands. “The Old World built them to run forever. When forever ended, they broke. Places like this… they don’t forget. They remember.”

  The words sat heavy.

  Grim stood at the helm, eyes locked on the horizon. “Memory or not, we cross it. Hold course.”

  Flick tapped nervously on his console, metal digits ticking against the panel. He spoke into his mic. “Pressure’s off again. Can’t get a stable read. Like the instruments don’t know where we are.”

  Ruck spat back at him through the microphone. “We know where we are. Middle of nowhere, heading to somewhere. That’s all that matters.” But his eyes didn’t leave the gorge.

  Patch felt off. The Leviathan’s engine purred under his boots, steady and strong, but the sound went flat when it reached the gorge—like the old asphalt swallowed it whole.

  The closer they got, the sharper the silence became. It pressed against the hull, heavier than the storm winds had ever been, like the whole gorge wanted them to know they weren’t welcome.

  Ash scanned from her turret, fingers white-knuckled on the grips. No birds. No carrion. Even the dust didn’t move.

  Patch shifted in his harness, eyes on the broken concrete below. Between the gaps, he swore he saw it. The faintest drag, like something sliding just out of sight. A weight too deliberate for shifting sand.

  When he blinked, it was gone.

  Mercy whispered, voice like a prayer and a curse in one: “The Old World still has a hold here.”

  Grim didn’t answer. She only raised her hand, signaling Ruck to put the Leviathan into low-gear crawl.

  The Leviathan’s engines dropped into a low growl as they began the descent. Every bolt and plate rattled in sympathy, but the sound felt wrong here, it was too loud in a place that demanded silence.

  Patch’s gaze caught movement again, just a shiver across the rubble, quick as a breath, there and gone. He kept it to himself. No sense spooking the crew when the gorge was already doing that for them.

  Even Mercy went quiet. Prayer beads still in her hands but unmoving, her lips pressed thin.

  The gorge narrowed, walls pulling tight on either side, funneling the Leviathan through a throat of broken stone. Once above them it might’ve been an overpass. Now it was just ruin, the skeleton of a road bridge sagging overhead, cables like snapped tendons swaying in the still air. The silence pressed harder. Even the crew felt it.

  Gauge came topside, muttering numbers under his breath, like he could measure his way out of fear. Ruck adjusted his grip on the wheel, eyes forward, jaw set.

  The Leviathan kept crawling, its bulk filling the gorge, a beast intruding on someone else’s bones. From somewhere deep in the canyon behind stone and shadow, came a scrape. Long. Slow. Like claws across buried steel.

  The scrape dragged on, metallic and wrong, until it shivered up the Leviathan’s hull.

  Ash rotated her turret fast, voice sharp through comms: “Contact. Starboard ridge. Move!”

  Ruck didn’t hesitate. He slammed the throttle forward, and the Leviathan bellowed like a waking god. Gears screamed, treads chewed, steel muscles straining against the sand. The whole deck shuddered, bowls rattling in the mess, tools clattering from their hooks. Gauge and Grim ran to man their stations, while Mercy fled lower into the rig, begging the gods to have mercy on their souls.

  That’s when the shadows peeled free.

  They slid along the gorge’s wall like ink poured from cracks, moving faster than anything had a right to, clinging to shattered pylons and fractured road beams. Too many limbs, too long, scraping sparks as they raked across the concrete to keep pace.

  Patch swung onto the rail, boots skidding as the Leviathan jolted forward. Harness snapped taut, ribs aching, but he barely noticed. His eyes were locked on the blur above—something crawling across the skeletal overpass, low and hungry.

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  It looked like the beast he saw in the dust storm.

  Its claws gouged into stone, peeling it like bark. A screech tore out, metal on metal, high and sharp enough to bite bone.

  “Movement, port side!” Ash’s voice cracked through the comms. “They’re flanking!”

  The gorge funneled tighter, walls pressing inward, nowhere to run but forward.

  Grim’s voice cut through the static, steady and brutal: “All gunners, light it up!”

  Ash squeezed the trigger. Her turret roared, rattling brass down the deck as tracer fire stitched across the wall. Stone spat and shadows scattered, too quick, darting from beam to beam. For every flicker she hit, another darted closer.

  Gauge’s panicked voice carried from the engine bay: “Pressure spike—rear axle grinding—”

  “Forget the axle!” Patch shouted into the wind. “Keep her breathing!”

  A shape dropped from the overpass, slamming into the Leviathan’s flank with enough force to rattle the spine. The impact screamed through the rig, armor denting inward like tin. Patch’s stomach lurched as he swung sideways, trying to catch sight of it. Its black limbs coiling and its white teeth snapping at steel.

  Ruck gritted his teeth, both hands white-knuckled on the wheel. “Hold steady, damn you! Hold steady!” The Leviathan roared again, engines redlining as the beast clung to her hull. Sparks poured down in rivers, smoke curling up from torn plating.

  Patch locked eyes on the thing clinging just below his rail. Its head jerked upward, dust-caked eyes like pits staring through him.

  It hissed. A sound not made for human ears.

  Patch drew his wrench, stupid and instinctual, and braced himself against the harness as the crew’s shouts blended into the storm of fire and steel. “Target on our skin!” he yelled, swinging down the harness line. His boots slammed into the plating just above the creature’s grip. One wrong move, and the creature would peel him off.

  The beast lunged, teeth slamming into steel inches from his boot. Patch swung hard, wrench cracking against one of its limbs. The jolt rattled up his arms, it felt like hitting rebar wrapped in leather.

  Above him Ash tracked another shadow leaping across the opposite ridge. “Fuck, we’ve got more!” she shouted, her voice almost lost in the roar. Bullets sparked stone, forcing the shapes to scatter, but they kept coming.

  Fast, relentless.

  Inside, Cinch cursed over the comms. “Cargo’s shifting! If we take another hit, balance goes—”

  Grim cut him off, her voice pure gravel. “Then we don’t take another hit. Hold it!”

  The creature on the hull below Patch screeched again and slammed a limb through the armor of the Leviathan. Metal tore, spraying shrapnel. Gauge’s panicked voice echoed from the engine bay: “Breach on the coolant line she’s bleeding fast!”

  Patch gritted his teeth and yanked a welding torch from his belt. With one hand on the harness and the other aiming blind, he jammed the flame into the creature’s claw. Fire blossomed, acrid smoke filling the air.

  The beast shrieked, flinging back in a frenzy but it didn’t let go. If anything, it bit deeper.

  Then Piston came charging up the deck, half-burned skin catching the light like charred leather, flamethrower tank hissing on his back. “Get your damn head down!” he bellowed.

  Patch ducked just as Piston let loose. A river of fire roared across the side of the Leviathan, engulfing the creature in liquid flame. It screamed. A sound that rattled glass, that didn’t belong to anything meant to walk this world.

  With that final wrenching screech, it tore free and dropped off the Leviathan, vanishing into dust and shadow.

  The gorge echoed with silence again. But only for a heartbeat.

  Ash screamed panic clear in her voice. “Contact port side, three more!”

  Shapes poured from the broken overpass, shadows skittering like spiders down the wall, faster than any turret could track.

  Ruck slammed the wheel, teeth bared. “We’re not rolling over—we’re punching through!”

  The Leviathan roared as he drove her into the walls of the gorge, steel screaming against stone, sparks flying in gouts. Shadows crushed, claws reached, and the crew braced for impact.

  The first wave hit hard.

  Three of them dropped together, slamming claws into the Leviathan’s hull. The whole rig shuddered. Metal screamed as one beast tore at the armor skirts, another clambered up toward the turret, the third gnashing at exposed cabling.

  Ash’s turret thundered point-blank. She carved one clean off the hull, sending it spinning into the gorge in a spray of sparks. But the recoil knocked her scope sideways, jamming the sight.

  “Turret’s fouled!” she cursed.

  Cinch scrambled up from the cargo bay, chains in hand, wrapping and locking down shifting crates as the Leviathan pitched under another impact. “We lose cargo, we lose balance, we roll!” he bellowed, knuckles white on the iron links.

  One of the creatures lunged for him, claws flashing.

  “Cinch!” Grim’s voice cut through the roar, sharp and commanding, but she was too far to intervene.

  The beast came down. Then it split sideways with a wet crack. Shade was there, a large knife buried to the hilt, eyes flat and cold. He didn’t say a word, just ripped his blade free and melted back into shadow, scanning for the next threat.

  Another creature’s screech tore the air like a siren. More shadows answered from above.

  Piston let loose another arc of flame, his laughter manic under the roar. One creature shrieked, black skin bubbling, but still it clung, trying to climb through the fire.

  Gauge’s voice bled through comms, ragged. “Coolant leak’s spreading—we’re overheating!”

  “Patch!” Grim’s order was steel. “Get that line sealed or we all fry.”

  Patch scrambled, sliding along the rail, sparks cutting his palms as the harness dragged him across torn steel. He climbed into one of the portholes leading to the engine bay, smoke boiling from ruptured pipes. Heat slammed him like a wall. His hands shook as he clamped a gasket and drove a bolt home with the heel of his wrench. Steam blasted his face.

  The stutter in the Leviathan’s heart steadied. Barely.

  Above, another shriek split the gorge. Piston fired again, lighting up the gorge walls. Mercy’s voice rose, prayer beads clattering as she shouted words half-forgotten, half-invented, desperation turned to ritual.

  Ruck roared over the comms, every word a growl: “We don’t stop, we don’t break, we drive through or we die here!”

  And he meant it.

  The Leviathan surged forward, engine screaming redline, she started the climb out of the gorge. Creatures clung and clawed, dragged sparks, snapped cables. One ripped free a panel. Sawyer inside the mess hurled a pot of boiling water into its face. It reeled back, shrieking into the dark.

  They fought tooth for tooth, steel for claw, fire for shadow. No mercy.

  When the gorge finally broke into open Flats again, the Leviathan burst through in a storm of smoke and flame, her hull dented and scarred, plates torn, engines bleeding heat.

  They were out.

  Behind them, the shadows melted back into the gorge, watching, waiting. Not beaten. Only delayed.

  Shade slipped a blasting stick from his coat, lit it without a word, and lobbed it into a crack in the old highway. The blast tore the concrete spine apart, collapsing stone and rebar in a choking wall of dust. The way behind them was gone—at least for now.

  Patch sat in the engine room, lungs burning, skin blistered, grease and blood mixing on his hands. The crew’s voices filled the comms, shaken, raw, alive.

  He spat dust, chest heaving. He exhaled, ragged. “The Flats don’t forgive,” he said, voice low but steady. “They just wait for the next fool to stand still.”