“Lemme know when ya spot the killers. I’m locked and loaded to light up some freaks.”

“I estimate a high probability the targets will hit another family restaurant tonight. Unfortunately, I cannot predict if they will target the east side of the District or the west. Maintain your patrol route and only strike when targets are in the open. Even if that means they reach tonight’s restaurant before we stop them.”

“Bastards. I ain’t gonna let ‘em slaughter another family.”

“Targets have only demonstrated a fifty percent fatality rate when interacting with humans.”

“So it’s a damned coin toss.”

“Correct. But they may not kill this family. Interrupting them with potential hostages nearby triples the risk of bystander fatality. We must accept that risk to the family.”

“Do ya hear yourself, ice queen? But, fine. If I can’t catch ‘em before, I’ll hit the freaks when they’re done. I just hope we can scrape up a few survivors this time. Last night was a bloodbath. We gotta stop ‘em before they kill again.”

“Agreed, Silver. We will try. Happy hunting.”

Chapter 1

Hilde looked smoking hot tonight, but I was too busy fighting for my life to care.

The simmering heat boiled me inside my black sleeveless Henley shirt and baggy cargo pants, but I brushed aside all discomfort to finish my battle. My fists clenched around my metal instrument handles so hard my palms ached. As chaos stormed all around me, the roar of flames and the stench of smoke, I blocked out everything but my crucial task.

At last, it was time. I drove my hand forward, gave it a twist…

And plated up the best chicken-fried steak sandwich I’d ever cooked in my life. A dash of gravy, a spoonful of coleslaw, and a generous helping of fried peppers made this spicy beast the best dish at Atomic Eats (“It’s the bomb!”). A paper cup of fries and a sprig of hydroponic parsley for digestion finished the presentation.

I slid it onto the metal outgoing rack next to the rest of the plates. “Order up!” And I jumped straight into the next ticket.

Sweltering heat rolled through the small but orderly kitchen as I turned back to my stainless steel prep table and started assembling the bed of coleslaw and spinach mashed potatoes for our pot roast salad.

Hey, no one ever said an Americana diner had to serve healthfood.

Hilde popped in through the swinging kitchen door. She stood five-foot-gorgeous with honey-blonde hair woven loosely into a long braid down her back and a blue silk flower clip. A light blue blouse strained heroically across the eighteen-year-old bombshell’s bouncy chest. She’d somehow squeezed her curvy thighs and hips into tight black pants with knee-high leather boots. The half-apron tied around her narrow waist gave her a domestic supermodel look, but what always got me were the kind blue eyes and gentle smile of a woman with no concern for how beautiful she truly was.

We shared a quick glance before Hilde scooped the plates onto her serving tray and hurried back out through the swinging door.

I loved the tickets with the fried house special because it meant I got to finish the whole plate myself. As the owner’s son, I’d been cooking chicken-fried steaks since I was two years old, which meant I’d had about sixteen years of experience to get it right. Still, my old man was by far the better cook.

Growing up in a restaurant and working almost every day of your life may sound tedious to some, but I adored every minute of it. Knowing the place would be handed down to me someday meant that even wiping grease off the floor became an act of ownership and tangible investment in my future. And while my dad as head chef handled most of the main entrees himself, my absolute favorite moments were when he’d say:

“Hey, Eddie. I need a break before my hands fall off. Why don’t you take over here?”

I whipped my head around so hard the vertebrae popped, but even the sudden pain couldn’t distract me from the greatest part of my night.

Henry Salt wore the same sleeveless black Henley shirt and cargo pants I did, which makes sense when you learn that we share the same pile of unfolded, mostly-fresh laundry. And the same bedroom. And bathroom. And basically everything else. When you live in a two-bedroom apartment above your family restaurant and your roommates are your dad and your fussy teenage sister who needs her privacy, menfolk can’t be choosy. At least we had separate bunk beds.

It helped that Pop and me shared the same body type, too: tall and crawling with lean muscle, with the same feathery black hair and piercing gray eyes. He looked pretty good for a man of thirty-six, which to an eighteen-year-old kid like me meant he was probably nearing death by old age, a sentiment he absolutely did not seem to appreciate. He’d got his first gray hair a week prior in one of his bushy eyebrows and I’d yet to let up teasing him about it, but even that was forgotten in the sudden rush of joy at hearing his request.

“Make way for the younger generation!” I hollered as I spun from the smaller back stove to face my father’s station. He had three burners going on the main stove and a collection of meats sizzling on the flat grill. I scanned them all within a few seconds. “Looks simple to me. Clear out of here, Pop, and let me show you how it’s done.”

My father chuckled and ruffled my hair. His greasy hands made a few passes and caused my hair to stand up in clumpy spikes before he paused, stared, and laughed again. “Whoops, sorry about that, Edgar. Messed up your pretty-boy hairdo. And on a day when Hilde looks her best, eh? Hope I didn’t ruin your chances to finally profess your undying love to her.”

“Listen here, old man,” I said as I flipped a burger on the grill and added a hefty dash of salt and pepper. “I’ll get to it when I’m good and ready. It’s just… complicated.”

Pop wiped his hands on a nearby towel that used to be white before years of tragic service. “You’ve been saying that two years now, Eddie. Don’t you see the way she’s dressed up tonight? Women don’t fancy themselves up for no reason. A nice girl like that doesn’t come along every day in Midcity, and you’re both the right age to start having kids. And I’m not getting any younger—”

“I’ll say,” I chimed in.

My father scowled. “Walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

My sister barged into the kitchen through the swinging door. Folks say the family resemblance is uncanny, and when the three of us go shopping together, passersby do a double-take at how similar we look. Evelyn Salt had the same gray eyes but wore her black hair in a tight top ponytail with the sides and back hanging like curtains. Unlike my dad and I in our drab black outfits, Evie wore a fuchsia dress with silver leggings and tall black leather boots. She’d accessorized her fashion assault with a bunch of hairpins, bracelets, and hanging bells and charms that jingled when she walked.

At sixteen years old and raised solely by her two uncouth male relatives, Evie had the style sense of an overcompensating fashionista and the sharp tongue of a middle-aged divorcée.

She cocked one eyebrow at seeing our father standing idle as he wiped his hands on a rag. “Are you two layabouts cooking in here or starting a gab circle? What do I even pay you for?”

Pop grinned. “Who’s paying who, here? I forget whose name is on the office door.”

“Our office is a coat closet with a card table,” Evie shot back, but I caught the mischievous sparkle in her eye. My sister lived to be a brat, and her favorite pastime was trading barbs with me and Pop. She’d get this itch about twice a month, and if she outwitted us, she’d scoff and storm off. But for all her bluster and acid, she’d smile like a kid at a birthday party if we flipped the tables and got one over on her. From the gleam in her eye, it looked like the game was afoot again.

Pop waved his once-white towel like a truce flag. “Hold up there, baby girl. Got a question for you. Is it my imagination, or is Hilde more dressed up than usual?”

My sister’s crazed gleam was joined by a smug grin. “You noticed! Yes, I helped her dress up and accessorize today. Her usual modest dresses just weren’t doing the job. And we got matching boots, even though she’s usually more of a flats kind of girl. But, the question is, did the dense warthog notice?” She shot me a scrutinizing look.

I flipped another lizard burger and scratched my cheek nonchalantly. “Mayhap I did. Then again, I’m busy slamming through these tickets, which someone is supposed to be running to the customers. Pop, looks like our front-of-house manager is slacking on her job. Can we fire her? Like, out of a cannon?”

Evie burst out laughing and the wicked gleam finally left her eyes. “Okay, you got me.” She smiled happily at me as she grabbed a couple plates and sauntered back through the swinging door into the restaurant.

Pop chuckled. “Women are relentless spirits, Eddie. But if you can earn one’s love, whether she’s your lover or your family, you’re in for the ride of your life.”

We cooked together through the dinner rush, with Pop swapping back in to take over the mains. I shuffled back to the smaller stove and prepped his mains while plating up the sides. Another chicken-fried steak sandwich came up and I was all over that like ugly on a gorilla, but it was just the one. By the end of the night we were both worn out, and as my father switched off his grill, I armed sweat from my brow.

“Another day, another dollar, Eddie,” my father told me.

“You say that every night, Pop. You think we’ll ever get two dollars instead of just the one?”

“Could be.” He carried his pans to the washbasin sink and started scrubbing. I stepped up beside him to the other basin to get to work on the day’s dishes. “Not a lot of extra scratch down here in Midcity, Eddie. Our regulars can’t afford higher prices, and not much wealth filters down from Topside. You know that.”

“I know, Pop. Still, it’d be nice to get ahead. I’m gonna inherit this place when you kick the bucket in a couple years—”

“Watch your mouth,” he growled as he scrubbed a cast iron skillet.

“—And I’d like to expand a bit, so our family isn’t cooped up in the same two bedrooms forever. Evie’s gonna find a blind and deaf man to marry her someday, I just know it, and it’ll be nice if her kids don’t have to sleep in the closet. Sorry, I mean in the business office.”

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “And what about you, Eddie? When you get married, where you gonna live?”

I did my best to pretend there was something burned into the bottom of my pan so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “I dunno, Pop. That’s just really complicated. You know?”

“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“Maybe it’s not for me. Love and marriage and all that fairytale stuff.”

“Fairytale?” He gaped at me, his eyes wide. “You don’t believe in love, Eddie? You know me and your mother—”

“Yeah,” I cut him off, just a little sharper than I meant to. “I know you guys had it good. You beat the odds. But look how that turned out.”

We both quieted for a minute as we grappled with our dirty dishes and dirtier feelings.

“Sorry,” I finally said. “Just a raw subject, you know?”

“I sure do,” Pop said quietly. “Pain complicates things, you’re right. But your mother would be sorely grieved to know her memory was a stumbling block for you, Edgar.”

“There just doesn’t seem to be much room for beautiful things to flourish down here in Midcity, Pop. We don’t even get real sunlight. Our hydroponic flowers are weak and wilted, just like the rest of us. And where else would I go? Leave Milheim City altogether? The supposed safety of ancient America is gone. It’s four hundred miles to the next city-state, and that’s if you can make it past the deadlands crawling with highwaymen. I couldn’t go without you and Evie. At least here we’ve got our restaurant. We’d wander a dusty world desperate for even half of this.”

“You sound like you’ve thought this over pretty hard.”

“Besides, Hidle’s got her own problems, as I’m certain you recall.”

Pop sighed. “That girl’s been a godsend since she joined us four years ago. She’s the best waitress we’ve ever had. But there’s always been a shadow over her face, even when you two were kids before she came to work for us. What evil thing lurks behind her that she’s afraid to turn and face? What’s become of this younger generation? You’re all doom and gloom. Don’t you know there’s more to life than misery?”

I held up a scrubbed pot. “Well, yeah. There’s also cooking.”

We burst out laughing together. My father gave me a big hug. I leaned into it. He’d always smelled like the same musky molasses vitamin D balm.

And yes, we shared the same sunlight-replacing balm from the same tin. Share and share alike, that’s every struggling Midcity family’s motto.

We finished scrubbing the kitchen spotless and then sauntered out through the swinging door into the restaurant. Hilde was just finishing up wiping some tables while Evie let the other two waitresses out through the front sheet metal door and locked it behind them.

What Atomic Eats lacked in space it made up for with personality and the best food in Midcity District Thirty-two. Most of our padded metal chairs even matched. Every wall was sheet metal, but we’d spruced it up with some of Evie’s elaborate colorful paintings and swirling designs, as well as cool odds and ends my father collected from junk shops. My own contribution was the kaiju paraphernalia sprinkled in here and there, especially the six-foot handmade clock on the back wall of a giant tree-covered lizard rampaging through a skyscraper city. It had hurt me to remove that from my bedroom, but our guests honestly needed to gaze upon its beauty more often than I did.

Plus my sister had called it an eyesore. I figured putting it directly in her line of sight every day as a show of swaggering dominance might quell her crazed need for verbal combat. In the end, it had extended us from a battle every week to every other week.

“Another day, another dollar,” Pop announced to the empty restaurant.

Hilde looked up and smiled sweetly at him, as she did every night when he announced exactly the same thing. She wasn’t insincerely placating him as her employer, either. She really indulged the old guy too much, but that was just her nature.

The big flatscreen on the back wall still blared out the local news with the sound off. Alyssa Varno, the famous bleached-blonde anchorwoman in a low-cut white blouse, was reporting on some story about medical advances. A golden diamond with crimson lettering in front of it which read Avalon Corp was splashed all over the screen, both as the logo of the owner of this sole news station in town and also as the subject of the news story, something about a new treatment Avalon Corp was working on to help Midcity folks dying from the deeplung virus. The scrolling crawl across the bottom extolled the virtues of the brave medical engineers at Avalon working tirelessly to save us all from oblivion. The segment ended and led straight into another report on the latest escaped corporate mutant attack in the city. I walked over and clicked it off for the night.

Evie came flouncing back from locking the front door with a spring in her step and a big grin on her face. “Topped the usual take by an extra twenty tonight!”

Pop did a double-take. “Twenty extra bucks? What happened?”

“A few new faces. They said their usual restaurant got bought out and the food sucks. Hilde served them.” She turned to the sweet patron angel of our establishment. “What do you think, Hilde? They gonna become repeat customers?”

Hilde hid a small laugh behind her hand. Her little feminine mannerisms drove me mad and made me almost forget all the complications keeping me from asking her out.

“They stuffed themselves silly,” Hilde said, “so I’ll lay another dollar on them coming back. The loudest guy really enjoyed that chicken-fried steak sandwich.” She shot me a thumbs-up. “Nicely done, Assistant Chef.”

I grinned and gave her a thumbs-up right back.

“Sunny!” Evie pumped her fist in triumph. “Every new regular we snag gets us one step closer to expanding my outfit selection.”

“Let’s fix that temperamental shower first,” I told her. “Nearly melted my face off this morning.”

Pop scoffed. “You’ve got to be gentle with the wrench, Eddie. Can’t just crank it all willy-nilly.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” I said drily. “We also need to get a real hot water knob instead of just a wrench.”

A loud knock at the front door silenced my father’s reply. He looked at my giant kaiju clock. “Bit late, and our regulars know what time we close.”

“I’ll check it,” Evie said, but I stopped her.

“Too late for little girls to be opening doors, Sis. Even if the kidnappers rush you right back after just ten minutes of dealing with you, it’d be a hassle.”

Evie stuck her tongue out at me as I strode over to unlock the metal door. Hilde hid another laugh behind her hand.

I turned the bolt, slid the door back just a crack to poke my face through, and opened my mouth to announce we were closed, so sorry about that, come back in the morning, but my breath caught in my throat.

Three hulking strangers stood on our front step, each of them at least seven feet tall and dressed in black suits with black ties. They wore filter masks over their lower faces, pretty standard for Midcity, but their upper faces were hidden by large sunglasses. Each man bore a shaved head and a handful of scars carved into his face, but the leader looked like he collected them as a hobby.

“Knock knock, little man. Mind if we come in?” the leader sleazed through his filtered mask.

I drew back a step in surprise. The scar collector took that as an invitation and slid the door open wide enough to accommodate his buddies. I had my hand on the iron bar bolted to the door as a handle, but my feeble strength was like a dinky moss lizard compared to his powerful arm. He threw the door open to its fullest and swept me aside as he strode in. His hulking buddies followed, not even giving me a second look.