Marcus looked at Colt. “There isn’t anywhere else. Everything outside that gate is finished. We haven’t seen another group of survivors in five years.” He gestured at the patched gate, at the sheet metal still being hammered into place. “This is it. This is all there is.”

  “Well.” Clay scratched the back of his neck. “It’s technically not out there.”

  Marcus looked at him. “What?”

  “It’s a different out there,” Clay said. “Hard to explain.”

  Dani looked between them. “What the hell does that mean.”

  Colt opened his mouth. Clay nodded at him.

  “We’re not from this earth,” Colt said.

  Dani stared at him. “You said you were from Wyoming.”

  “I am. Just a different Wyoming on a different earth.”

  “Earth, this earth,” Marcus said slowly. “You keep saying that.”

  The gate shook behind them. Something heavy on the other side. Then the moan picked back up, low and steady.

  “It’s a long story,” Clay said.

  “But it’s safe,” Colt said. “Safer anyway. No coyotes. No ninjas. No corrupted.” He paused. “Just some animals.”

  Marcus went still. “Animals.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind.”

  “As far as we’ve seen, birds and cats mostly.”

  Clay cleared his throat. “Really big birds. Really big cats.”

  “And a bear,” Colt said.

  Marcus looked at them both. Something had changed in his face, not quite belief but something close to hunger. “How big we talkin’.”

  “Big enough to eat a mammoth,” Clay said.

  Marcus stared at him. “A mammoth.”

  “There’s those too,” Colt said.

  Marcus was quiet for a second. “You’re telling me there’s an earth with no people. Just animals. Big ones.”

  “Forty-five thousand years before people showed up,” Colt said. “Give or take.”

  “We ain’t eaten real meat in three years,” Marcus said. Not to Colt specifically. Just out loud. Like he was doing math in his head.

  He looked at the gate again. At the sheet metal. At the moaning on the other side that wasn’t going to stop tonight or any night after it.

  He turned back around.

  “Listen up,” he said. His voice carried across the compound without him raising it much. People stopped what they were doing and looked at him. “All of you.”

  They gathered in loose groups. Some still holding tools. A woman with a kid on her hip. The two men who’d been hammering sheet metal. Everyone who was left.

  Marcus let them settle.

  “This man says he knows somewhere safe,” he said. He pointed at Colt. “Somewhere the corrupted aren’t. Somewhere the coyotes aren’t. Somewhere those things that came through tonight aren’t.”

  Murmuring moved through the group.

  “Where,” someone said from the back.

  “That’s the part that’s hard to explain, and right now I can’t.” Marcus said.

  More murmuring. A man near the front crossed his arms. “There’s nowhere safe. We’ve been out there. There’s nothing.”

  “That’s what I thought too, but he said it’s not out there, somewhere different.”

  “Somewhere different,” A woman stepped forward, “and why should we believe him?

  Marcus looked at Colt. Studied him the way you study a hand of cards before you decide whether to bet everything on it.

  “I don’t know that I do,” he said. “But I know what’s on the other side of that gate. We starve to death or get overran. If there’s a third option… it’s worth looking into.”

  Nobody argued with that.

  Marcus turned to his people. “Get inside. All of you. Grab everything you can carry and get it into the building. Barricade the doors and don’t open them for anything until I’m back.”

  People looked at each other.

  “Move,” he said.

  They moved.

  He watched them go for a second then turned to Dani. “I need you to take charge while I’m gone. Keep everyone calm. Keep everyone together.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Dani looked at him. “You’re really doing this.”

  “Somebody has to go first.” He shrugged. “Rather it be me.”

  She held his gaze a moment then nodded once.

  Marcus turned back to Colt. “Alright. How do we get there.”

  “This is gonna look crazy,” Colt said. “Just trust me.”

  He opened his map, found Earth 329, and hit travel. The portal split open in front of them, blue and white light spilling out and washing across the dirt. The hum of it cut through the noise of the compound.

  The reaction was immediate. People who hadn’t made it inside yet stumbled back. Someone shouted. A woman grabbed her kid and ran. Two men near the building door just stood there with their mouths open.

  “Don’t do it Marcus.” Someone called out. “It’s a trick.”

  “Do it.” Someone else. “Marcus go.”

  Marcus turned to the nearest man and held out his hand. The man unshouldered his rifle without a word and handed it over. Marcus checked the magazine, slapped it back in.

  He looked at Colt. “You said really big bear.”

  “Yeah.”

  He handed the rifle back. “Who’s got the three-thirty-eight.”

  A woman in the back unslung a bolt action and passed it forward. Marcus took it, worked the bolt once, checked the round in the chamber, and closed it. He held it up and looked down the iron sights.

  “Nothing this won’t stop with a well placed shot,” he said. He slung it over his shoulder.

  Colt stepped through without looking back.

  A beat passed.

  Marcus followed.

  Clay touched the brim of his hat at Dani. “Be safe now. Okay.”

  Then he stepped through and the portal closed behind him.

  ***

  They came out on the other side into open air and Marcus stopped walking.

  He just stood there.

  The sky stretched out blue and clean above them, the kind of blue that had nothing in it. No smoke. No haze. No violet anywhere. Just sky going on until it didn’t anymore. The grass ran out ahead of them in every direction, long and pale gold where the wind moved through it, broken up by stands of trees that hadn’t been touched by anything.

  Marcus breathed in through his nose. Slow. His eyes moved across the horizon and didn’t stop on anything because there was nothing wrong to stop on. He crouched down and put his hand flat on the grass. Just held it there.

  Colt watched his face.

  Marcus turned to him. A small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. Just for a second. Then it was gone and he was looking at the tree line and the bluff rising up beyond it in the distance.

  “Past that forest,” Colt said. “There’s a cave in the bluff. Big enough for everyone.” He thought about how to explain the rest of it. “It’s got some things in it. We’ll get to that.”

  Clay was already moving toward the tree line.

  They moved into the forest.

  The trees closed in around them, second growth dense enough to cut the wind. The ground was soft under their boots, leaves thick from seasons nobody had touched. Birds moved in the canopy above them, sounds Colt didn’t know the names of.

  Marcus walked with his head up, eyes moving. Taking everything in. Colt had seen that look before on men who hadn’t eaten well in a long time walking past a full table.

  They heard the river before they saw it. That same sound Colt remembered, moving fast over rocks somewhere ahead through the trees.

  Clay picked up his pace.

  “Clay,” Colt said. “What’re you doin’.”

  Clay didn’t answer. He pushed through the last of the brush and hit the riverbank and crouched down fast. He stayed there a second, both hands in the water, feeling along the bottom.

  He stood up grinning. Water dripping off his arms. The shotgun in his hands.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” he said.

  He cracked it open and shook the water out and looked down the barrel. Worked the action twice. Some of the finish had gone but the metal was solid.

  “Pa’s gun,” Colt said.

  “Pa’s gun,” Clay said. He wiped it down on his shirt and slung it over his shoulder next to the rope.

  Marcus watched him. Didn’t ask.

  They crossed the river on the log, single file, and climbed the bluff on the far side. Colt’s shoulders burned the same as before. Marcus climbed without complaint, rifle slung, using his hands on the rock where he needed to.

  At the top Marcus stood and looked out over the tree line below.

  “What’s that,” he said.

  Colt followed his eyes. The mech lay on its side in the trees at the base of the cliff, half buried in broken branches, one arm extended. From up here it looked small. It wasn’t.

  “One of the things inside,” Colt said.

  Marcus looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked at the cave mouth. Then back at the wreckage.

  “What aren’t you telling me.”

  “It’s easier if I just show you.”

  Clay crouched near the boneyard and looked at the bones scattered in the grass. Some old. Some not. He put his hand near a dark patch on the ground and looked up at Colt. “Bear’s been here. Yesterday maybe. Came and went.”

  Marcus looked at the cave mouth. At the size of it. At the darkness beyond the threshold. He didn’t say anything.

  They went inside.

  The cave ran dark past the first few feet. Colt dug in his satchel for the matches Kevin had given him and found a dry branch near the entrance among the scattered bones. He struck a match and held it to the bark until it caught.

  The torch threw shadows up the walls as they moved deeper. The temperature dropped. The stone pressed in on both sides.

  Then the walls changed.

  Marcus reached out and touched the surface. Ran his palm along it, metal.

  “What is this,” he said.

  “Keep going,” Colt said.

  The doors appeared ahead. Twenty feet tall, dark metal, claw marks gouged deep into the surface in sets of four and five. Marcus stopped and looked at them. At how deep the marks went. At how many there were.

  He looked at Colt.

  “Bear did that,” Colt said.

  Marcus looked at the doors again. Then he unslung his rifle and held it in both hands. “Should’ve brought the fifty cal.”

  The eye scanner sat on the wall to the right. Colt leaned in and the green light swept across his eye. The doors hissed and started sliding apart.

  Light spilled out from the corridor beyond, steady and white, still running after all this time.

  They walked through.

  The elevator took them down. Marcus stood in it looking at the walls, at the buttons, at the lights still running. He didn’t say anything.

  When the doors opened he walked out and stopped.

  He stood at the edge of the hangar and looked at the ship. At the landing struts wide as wagon wheels. At the dark hull with its panels and vents. At the section of hull blown open, edges curled back, scorch marks running up the side.

  Two bodies on the floor in black cloth, still where they’d fallen. Another smashed flat and streaked across the floor.

  Marcus looked at the bodies. Then at Colt.

  “Those things were here too,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Colt said. “They came after me. Not this place.”

  “How do you know they won’t come back.”

  “They follow me,” Colt said. “When I find something they want. I don’t have anything here. No reason for them to come back to this Earth.”

  Marcus looked at the bodies a moment longer. Something moved behind his eyes.

  Colt could tell he was putting it together. The ninjas showing up at the compound the same night Colt and Clay arrived. The timing of it. He didn’t ask. Maybe he’d decided the answer didn’t matter right now. Maybe he’d decided he didn’t want to know.

  He stood there a long time.

  “Who built this,” he said.

  “Don’t know,” Colt said. “They’re gone now. Long gone.”

  “These work.” Marcus walked to the nearest mech and put his hand on the leg. He craned his neck back to look up at the head.

  “Don’t know yet,” Colt said. “One of them did. That’s what’s at the bottom of the cliff.”

  Marcus walked between the rows slowly. He looked at the cannons. At the size of the hands. At the scale of the whole thing.

  He stopped in the middle of the hangar and turned around.

  “Clear the bodies,” he said. “Before we bring everyone through. Nobody else needs to see them.”

  He turned and looked at Colt.

  “Then we get everyone,” he said. “All of them. Tonight.”