Forgotten City Read online

  “Situational awareness, Son—always know what’s around you, and always have an escape route.”

  He wished sometimes he could switch off his dad’s voice—but his rules were deeply ingrained after so many expeditions together. Kobi clambered over a fallen trunk, pausing against the side of an overturned school bus. The intersection ahead was pretty exposed—a hundred yards of bare asphalt. It was always a risk to cross it. He watched the vine-covered houses across the street. Anything could be lurking in those doorways—and he’d be right in their line of sight.

  When he was satisfied it was all clear, he took off at a sprint. His dad had always moved too slowly for Kobi’s liking. He reached the safety of the trees on the far side within seconds, glad of the foliage overhead.

  “Stay under cover when you can. Don’t be visible from above.”

  Vertical gouges marked the nearest tree trunk. Cougars probably. They’d practically stumbled into one a few months back—hyperaggressive like most Waste-infected predators. It had taken three crossbow bolts to bring it down. Kobi still remembered how he’d felt as the adrenaline drained from his veins. His dad said the animal was better off out of its misery, and as he watched it die, Kobi thought he saw some relief in the creature’s yellow eyes.

  Moving between the massive trunks, Kobi passed the rusted chassis of a taxi lying on its back in the middle of the street like a stranded turtle. Foliage grew through the windows, and vines threaded over the front and back axles. Kobi waited behind it for a few more minutes, then pressed on, hurrying beneath the sign telling him he was on SW Genesee.

  The street to the south was clearer, a wide expanse of crusted earth, with mounds of dirt pressed up against crumbling buildings. A dark scar ran across the road ahead, blocking the way. Kobi had come this way before, with his dad. Sometime in the past, a water tower had collapsed, causing a mudslide across two blocks, flattening several houses. As it had dried, a crack had opened up. Coming closer, Kobi realized the crevasse had grown since the last time he’d been there. It was now twenty feet deep and fifteen across. He peered over the edge. The pit below was filled with Chokerplants, vines covered in spikes slithering slowly over one another like giant anacondas. Wrapped in the coils of one were the remains of some large, fur-covered animal, its limbs at crooked, unnatural angles. Kobi shuddered. Plenty of bones littered the chasm—other creatures unlucky enough to stumble in.

  His dad would never have been that dumb though.

  “We’ll skirt around it,” he said. “Never take risks you don’t have to.”

  But the detour would be much longer now, and take Kobi into a maze of residential streets he didn’t like the look of. He took a few steps back from the edge to get a running start. “Sorry, Dad,” he said, picturing his father’s horrified expression. But Kobi knew he could make it. The tests they’d done in the school gym proved his abilities were increasing on every metric. Unnaturally so. Strength, speed, endurance, and cell regeneration were off the charts for a kid his age. They weren’t sure why, but Dad said it was likely down to Waste exposure pre-birth—Kobi was showing the same enhanced physiology that Waste-infected creatures did, but without the negative side effects.

  He sprinted toward the gap, imagining a football in his hands and a row of those Seahawks linebackers blocking his path. At the edge, he pushed off, feeling the power drive through his muscles. He came down on the other side with room to spare.

  He allowed himself a grin and lifted his hands in the air.

  “Touchdown,” he muttered under his breath.

  He took two more steps before something snagged around his ankle.

  2

  WHAT THE—?

  Kobi’s foot jerked from beneath him and the sidewalk rushed toward his head. He just managed to cross his arms to protect himself before slamming into the ground, but the breath burst from his lungs. Looking back, he caught sight of a yellow vine, as thick as his wrist, wrapped around his sneaker.

  It was pulling him toward the edge of the crevasse. Kobi’s body thrummed with panic as he struggled to get his breath. He tried to tug free and hissed in pain as the Chokerplant’s barbs sank through his pants and into his flesh. He scrabbled for purchase, but there was nothing to grab a hold of.

  Kobi rolled onto his back and yanked the machete from the sheath, aiming and hacking. The first slice missed, drawing sparks off the asphalt. The second hacked three-quarters of the way through the vine. Yellow sap oozed from the wound. Kobi swung again, severing the vine. The broken end reared like a snake, then slid back over the edge.

  Kobi scrambled up, letting the dead coils slip off his ankle. He was breathing hard.

  He pictured his dad’s face again and felt blood burning his cheeks, trying not to imagine what he would say if he were here.

  “Idiot!” Kobi growled at himself.

  He pulled up his pant leg and saw the rows of bleeding puncture wounds. It would heal soon enough, but he’d be slowed for a while.

  And there were things out here that could smell blood from miles away.

  Limping slightly, and moving with extreme caution, he continued through the dense forest. Streams and wet ditches crisscrossed the mossy ground, and lichen-covered cars looked like massive boulders. Here and there, Kobi caught sight of the houses set back from the road. Some had skeletal branches growing through them, and others were covered in explosions of exotic flowers. It would be easy to get lost there, but he knew a few markers from his trips out with his dad. A mailbox at an angle with the number 3321; an old basketball net still standing among the trees; someone’s speedboat, rearing up like it had caught a wave; the old filling station with a sign reading “NO MORE GAS!” Dad said that people panicked and tried to get out when the Waste really took hold. But by then it had been too late—there was nowhere to run to.

  Kobi passed it all quickly but on high alert, checking the map whenever he could find cover.

  It took a couple of hours before he neared the river, where the roadway ramped up and the apartment blocks grew more substantial, giving way to industrial buildings. Many had collapsed in on themselves years before, though a few chimneys remained, standing defiant against the tide of organic matter that swarmed up their walls. Closer to the bridge, the Duwamish waterway had burst out of its banks in places, making a swamp below. Several Walmart trucks lay stranded on their sides in the marshland like the corpses of beached whales.

  West Seattle Bridge was still standing, though its stanchions were covered in vines, and the road had sprouted grasses like a wild meadow. Kobi wondered how much longer the structure would last before it gave in to the forces of Waste and nature. Beyond, rising through fog, the cityscape appeared. Skyscrapers swathed in green, like strange columns of vegetation, and above them all the delicate spire of the Space Needle—the only place where the plants hadn’t completely taken hold, thinning toward the top. He’d seen plenty of pictures of the old city, and even a few films from the school’s archives. Sidewalks teeming with people, buildings aglow with light, signals and billboards flashing, thousands of cars. All gone.

  Kobi paused at the edge of the bridge, taking out the map again. This was as far as he’d ever gone with his dad. As far as he’d ever been allowed to go. Over the bridge, in the city proper, there were untold dangers.

  His plan was simple. Head to his dad’s lab at the university. And try not to get killed, of course.

  With a tickle of dread across the back of his neck, he began to cross the bridge, darting quickly between cars and bushes, ignoring the stinging pain in his ankle. The water below and the bay beyond were dark and choppy. Kobi didn’t know if anything in the sea had survived the Waste. If it was the same as on land, it wasn’t worth thinking about the mutated monsters that might be lurking under the surface.

  He got most of the way across the bridge in a couple of minutes. Toward the far side, a truck was jackknifed across the highway, its rear doors hanging open. He was creeping around it when his eyes spotted a glimmer of me
tal in the sky. Terror spiked through his chest.

  Snatcher.

  “If you see a Snatcher, drop whatever you’re doing and find cover right away. I mean it, Kobi. No ifs. No buts. Just hide.”

  He skidded underneath the truck and held his breath. If it had picked up his heat signature, he had to be ready to run.

  After a few seconds, he peered out. The thing was heading slowly toward the north. Its ten-foot wings were spread wide, and birdlike metal talons glinted from its underbelly next to an array of cameras and scanners.

  Hiding under the truck, Kobi’s every instinct screamed to turn around and head back to the school. A crossbow and Taser were no match for a Snatcher.

  I’ve come this far. I can’t give up on Dad now.

  He peered up, saw the sky was clear, and dashed to the railing at the edge of the bridge. It was ten yards to the lower road, and the drop would have broken his dad’s legs, but Kobi swung his legs over and lowered himself as far as he could before releasing. He landed in a crouch, cushioning the impact on his knees. The puncture wounds on his ankle burned with pain, but he forced himself not to cry out. His eyes searched for trouble on the lower level, but there was no movement.

  Staying under cover where he could, Kobi moved beneath overpasses and between looming warehouses suffocated in rogue vegetation. There was little to attract big predators here, but he still heard the occasional bird shriek or patter of paws. Each animal sound brought his progress to a halt as he waited for the noise to move past.

  Checking back to the map every couple of blocks, sometimes stopping and taking stock of his surroundings for several minutes at a time, Kobi finally reached the first of his father’s Fs—a minimarket. He couldn’t see inside the store because there were leaves pressed up against the glass. The automatic doors, he noted, were open a fraction. Normally Kobi and his dad would have taken the time to scope it out tactically—going solo was dangerous.

  Kobi took out his machete, which would be better for any close-quarter encounters than the crossbow. As he approached, there were no obvious signs of any predators inside. No movement or sounds. He stepped around a sidewalk—Chokerplants lurked below many, and they sensed their prey through vibration of the ground. He pulled open the door farther and pushed aside a snaking tendril of ivy. The place was warm and musty, and he could just about make out the cash register beyond the broken bottles littered across the floor. It was dark because of the plant life blocking the windows, so he flicked on his flashlight, moving the beam across the interior.

  The shop had already been looted, that much was clear. Probably in the chaos after the first wave of contamination, or maybe by later survivors until they, too, succumbed to the Waste. But not everything had been taken. Plenty of stuff was just dust in packets now—bread, potato chips, candy. There were dried soups, but they had almost no nutritional value. An old refrigerated cabinet was sprouting huge colonies of mold and fungi. Rounding an aisle, Kobi’s heart leaped as he saw cans on a shelf. He started to rifle through them. One thing his dad had taught him a long time back—“best by” dates meant nothing.

  “If the seal’s good, what’s inside is good.”

  He found a few cans of macaroni in tomato sauce, and some beef chili that made his mouth start to water. Vegetables—carrots and potatoes and beans.

  He started loading up his backpack, calculating rations already. There was enough for several weeks. He could return with his dad, though it might take a couple of trips to get it all back to the school. Then Kobi found some canned pineapple hiding behind a row of canned mushrooms and couldn’t help himself. He cracked open the top with his Swiss Army knife and tipped the can to his lips. The juice was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. Opening it up the rest of the way, he shoveled the fleshy pieces into his mouth, barely stopping to chew. He belched.

  “Pardon me,” he said, grinning.

  Then he heard the rattle of metal, and the grin vanished.

  Kobi kept his body completely still, pineapple juice dribbling over his chin.

  There was a shuffling, scraping sound coming from nearby.

  Inside the store . . .

  Kobi swallowed, and even that seemed horribly loud.

  It might be nothing. Just a plant shifting. A draught. Or it could be Dad. . . .

  He heard a deep, snorting breath, and his insides turned liquid.

  The sound definitely wasn’t human.

  The shuffling noise edged closer, and Kobi slowly turned to track the sound. It seemed to be coming from somewhere at the back of the store. He glanced toward the exit, making calculations. He could make it, but not silently.

  It might just be a rat. They could be aggressive but on their own weren’t much of a threat. And they were edible, at least for Kobi, with his immunity to the effects of Waste. Kobi slung the crossbow off his shoulder.

  A crashing sound, and the whole shelf wobbled suddenly, as if something had bashed into the other side. A sweat broke out across Kobi’s upper back.

  A rat couldn’t do that.

  The breaths were getting closer, and it sounded like they were coming from something massive. Something that could smell him through the bear musk.

  Or something that wasn’t afraid of bears.

  Kobi made a quick assessment. His backpack was too far for him to reach. Slowly, he picked up the half-empty can of pineapple.

  Please, let this work. . . .

  He hurled it to the back of the store. It landed with a rattle of metal, and the shelf beside him shook again as the creature’s heavy feet broke into a run in the same direction as the distraction. Kobi lunged for the exit.

  3

  KOBI BURST OUT ONTO the street and started running.

  A moment later, he heard a crash. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a huge four-legged shape skid out onto the sidewalk, raining shattered glass from its gray fur. Another shape followed, slightly smaller. As Kobi took them in, his blood turned cold. Wolves, the bigger one six feet tall at least. They’d come straight through the glass door. Claws curled and jagged, scraping the ground. Bellies bloated from hunger. The creatures’ eyes gleamed a Waste-infected sickly yellow.

  Kobi scanned his surroundings. He was out in the open with no shelter in sight, and he knew he couldn’t outrun the wolves.

  “In a life-and-death situation, make a decision quickly and don’t change your mind.”

  Kobi stopped and turned to face the wolves, which were maybe fifty feet away. His arms felt heavy. Move! he commanded himself.

  He reached for his crossbow and leveled the sight at the smaller creature’s head. For a second he imagined his dad looking over his shoulder like when they used to do target practice in the gym. . . .

  “Always go for the body. It’s the biggest target.”

  He dropped his aim and pulled the trigger, but his hands were shaking and the bolt thumped into the wolf’s foreleg. It jerked back, then reached down with its jaws and gripped the shaft between its teeth. With a sharp tug, the bolt tore loose.

  Waste didn’t only make some creatures larger. It made them smarter too.

  Kobi’s crossbow reloaded automatically. He fired again, and the second bolt embedded in the larger animal’s neck. It let out a strangled, guttural growl and came to a stop. The other creature halted and turned to its companion. Kobi aimed for the smaller creature’s chest and pulled the trigger once more, but the bolt mechanism jammed. The wolf took a loping pace forward, and Kobi knew it was a split second from attacking. He was stuck. If he ran, he’d be taken out in no time. A shadow fell from above, along with a whir like a nest of hornets. The larger wolf shrank back as a Snatcher descended, gleaming and hovering on air jets that blasted the foliage. The Snatcher’s legs scooped up the smaller predator. For a moment all Kobi saw were legs scrabbling through the gaps, accompanied by a terrified yelping, then the Snatcher shot vertically from the road. The whole thing had taken less than a couple of seconds.

  That could have been me. . . .
r />   Kobi shouldered the crossbow and fled. He didn’t look back. Didn’t need to because he could hear the wolf’s paws pounding fast along the road behind him. He concentrated on the road ahead and on driving every last ounce of power into his legs.

  No rules for this. Just survive at any cost. Buildings blurred past on either side, then he plunged into a thicket of trees. Twigs whipped his skin and lashed his clothes as he stumbled over roots. The crash of foliage at his back grew closer. The machete in its sheath bounced against his leg.

  Still running, he pulled the bear-musk can from its holster and drew his machete. He slammed the blade into the can and an explosion of scent misted out in a cloud. Kobi tossed the can over his shoulder, hoping it would fall somewhere in the wolf’s path.

  Sure enough, the paws slowed. A tree lay across the road ahead. Kobi vaulted it, then veered left, doubling back. He pressed up against a thick trunk, fighting for air. He heard nothing but his own heavy breathing. Risking a look, he saw the creature with its muzzle to the ground, moving around the misting can. The stink of bear was overpowering.

  If I get out of this, I promise I’ll never be careless again.

  The wolf lifted its head from the can, swaying its massive shaggy head back and forth. Kobi could see its nostrils flaring. Then it moved slowly forward, dipping its head every so often.

  I did it. I fooled it!

  The wolf was walking away, putting distance between them. Twenty feet, twenty-five. It jumped onto the same log Kobi had leaped over, and paused, staring intently at the ground for a good few seconds. Kobi realized what it was looking at. His footprint. A skidded smear of mud as he’d made a turn. The wolf turned too, looking toward his hiding place, and Kobi froze.

  He couldn’t tell if the creature could see him through the thick foliage. But the wolf’s gaze was unyielding. The wolf took a pace in his direction. Kobi didn’t know whether to move or sit tight. Another step. Then another, quicker.