Under the City of a Sleeping God

There was no sight of the sun, only the same emerald hint. If Private Liz Gardner squinted hard enough and looked within the expanse of mist, the light would gleam brighter in one spot, her eyes would ache, and she could imagine there was a star there, bright and gleaming. For now, the dull effect spread through the sky, incandescent and unnatural, and even through the haze and dirty eye sockets of her over-used gas mask, the splendor made the terrain look like an underwater expanse. Slow falling ash flakes, not unlike soft diatoms, dusted downward as if floating within a briny sea.

Beyond the glow of phantoms, the outskirts of ruins still stood. Here, towers stretched upward like some old fuzzy nightmare version of Atlantis. This city, however, was not a fantasy realm of old, nor were any fair-haired mermaids patrolling these vestiges. Instead, this was the wrecked expanse of a real human civilization-a place where people had once lived.

A few skyscrapers rose upward into the sludgy sky, laden with ice, snow, and green dust. Some tottered on their side, broken and stuck in the ground like giant arches in some game of hell-spawned croquet. Old highway ramps leaned into rubbled stairwells that led to nowhere. Cars stopped dead in place on roads right to where they were abandoned years ago. Billboards, covered in sheets of jade ice and ash folded into the concrete. Further off, you could almost see the baseball stadium as it rotted away.

Yet the haunted city was far from empty;

In the street below, Liz saw the rest of her squad; four other figures discernible through the haze. They were soldiers like her, clad in dusky gear with clouded gas-mask hidden eyes. They walked spread apart in a wide "V" along the rubble lined road, rifles held at the ready in gloved hands. Next to them, stop signs and cars twisted into balls like yarn. Here, rows of smaller buildings lined an old commercial district strip mall.

Most wore long jackets, patchwork with a mish-mosh of different styles of the gas masks or breathers on their face. There was no rank or insignia on their worn coats, save for homemade emblems and hand stitched effigies of assorted devils, Christian crosses or Spartan helms. Likewise, they had on rucksacks stuffed with packs of (semi) clean food, ammunition bandoleers, extra filters for their masks, and water filled canteens. Two of the bunch, including the lead man on point, wore newer helms for powered armor sets, sans the rest of the armor. Liz's own mask was ancient-forty years old and made long before she was born.

And so it was, this ruin was Denver, Colorado… what was left of it at least. Both the name and date, however, had been mostly forgotten. It was here, many nameless years back, that humanity made their last stand against the great Destroyer…and it was here in Denver that, likewise, the last of humanity still lingered.

"I can't see him yet," Liz whispered as she looked to the gnarled metal towers on the green horizon. The young soldier had not worked in the city before, and now she burst with anxiety and excitement all at once. Her black hair tossed behind her mask's straps in a neat pony-tail as she looked to the distant spires.

"Can it, Liz," another soldier scolded her. "-we're too close to the city now….Dammit, you know they're Yugs all over here."

Liz glowered at the man under her mask. Corporal Joseph Sykes was an asshole, she thought, but what he said went. As it was, she knew she was lucky to have been picked for this mission. To be sent into the heart of the city in a group of five was no small honor.

"Shut up both of you," Sergeant MacCauley snapped.

Suddenly, the point-man at the head of the patrol took a knee and Liz's heart raced. The man's coat tapped the ground as he lifted his gloved hand in a clenched fist. Without another command, all the other troopers went down behind any scrap of cover they could find.