“All clear,” Jimmy whispered. “No sign of the drifter.”

“Good.” Dixon leveled his rifle towards the valley, aiming at the bone-white head of one of the lookouts. Unfortunately for him, and the rest of the muties in the valley, said lookout was looking the wrong direction. They probably hadn’t been expecting an assault from the cliffs.

Dixon squeezed the trigger. The rifle let out an echoing crack that bounced off the nearby stone, and the cannibal dropped to the ground, the back of his head a mess of blood and brains.

At this distance, even the noise from an unmuffled sniper wouldn’t attract too much attention; not unless one of them saw the dead lookout and went running into their cave to raise the alarm. Assuming the cannibals had anything like an alarm.

He shifted his rifle to another outlying cannibal and fired, watching with satisfaction as the second cannibal collapsed with an equally exploded head.

One of the things Dixon loved about the sniper rifle was its efficiency. Just one shot to the head, and the target was either dead or very nearly there. No need to finish the target off with a second or third shot like with body shots or headshots with pistols. Preserved ammo, too, precious resource that it was.

It had its downsides, like any weapon. Like any thing in general, as a matter of fact. But so far, those downsides hadn’t quite snuck up on Dixon.

Not until right then, when Jimmy’s previously relaxed form beside him suddenly went rigid. Less than a second later, something hard and round pressed against the back of Dixon’s head: the barrel of a small-caliber gun.

Dixon might’ve found them inefficient as all hell, but even he knew that a shot to the back of the head wouldn’t do them no favors—specially not when the rest of Black Sun was waiting for them to do their jobs.

Irritation bubbled in him as he slowly lowered his rifle and turned to Jimmy, whose eyes were wide with fear. “You were supposed to be spotting!” he hissed.

Not for the first time, he missed Marshal Taye.

Their new threat nudged the both of them with the barrels, and Dixon and Jimmy turned slowly in unison to face newcomer.

Dismay filled Dixon when he saw the same hazmat-suited drifter from before, a .44 revolver in each hand. Their breathing was slow and methodical, but far louder than anyone else’s Dixon had ever met, and he found himself wondering how the hell they had managed to sneak up on him and Jimmy.

Dixon expected demands or threats, or even to be shot without a word. What he didn’t expect was a long, tense standoff. Though, was it technically a standoff if only one of the participants was really armed?

Finally, the drifter jerked the revolver aimed at Dixon, and nodded towards him, breath hissing in and out of the hose attached to their mask. Dixon had no idea what that meant, but he figured he might as well introduce them.

“I’m Marshal Martin Dixon of the free Outpost of Black Sun.” He nodded over to Jimmy. “Deputy James Condroy, also of Black Sun.” He narrowed his gaze at the drifter, trying to see even a hint of humanity through those opaque eye holes. “And how ‘bout you? You with the cannibal freaks?”

A rough jerk of the head, though the drifter didn’t actually speak.

“Then why’re you holdin’ us up?” Dixon demanded. “Honestly, we’re doin’ the whole wasteland a favor, here.”

A rough wheeze escaped the drifter’s hose and mask — was it supposed to be a laugh? Either way, they slowly lowered their revolvers, though they remained unholstered. Fine. Dixon could deal with that, so long as he didn’t have a gun pointed directly at his head.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Rather than answer verbally, the drifter gestured towards their own chest, towards the faded name tag on their duster that read H.M. Wilkes. The bulky hazmat suit under their duster and their apparent unwillingness to talk made it impossible to tell if Wilkes were a man or a woman. Dixon could work with that; already his mind was going over possibilities. It was clear, just from the way they held their guns, that Wilkes was experienced. Not too surprising, since knowing how to shoot a gun was generally a requirement for surviving in the badlands. Still, good to know.

“So… Wilkes?” At their nod, he continued, “Care to help us clear out this nest of cannibals? I’m sure our beloved mayor would be more than happy to extend a reward your way.”

Wilkes cocked their head, then nodded. Dixon was, admittedly, surprised. He’d been expecting a bit more resistance from the stranger. Still, he wasn’t one to look a gift rifle in the barrel, and gestured Wilkes over to the cliff he and Jimmy had been perched over before the standoff.

Jimmy moved stiffly, his expression somewhere between discomfort and worry. Dixon did his best to ignore it; as harebrained as Jimmy could be, he knew better than to bring up his concerns in front of a stranger. But Dixon knew he’d be hearing some sort of objection just as soon as Wilkes left them.

Dixon nodded to the cave entrance. “See the cave?” At Wilkes’s nod, he continued, “Figure they’ve got a few hostages in there. Rescuin’ the hostages ain’t strictly our job, but I’m not lookin’ to leave anyone in the hands of cannibal freaks, so we’ll need to move through and clear the caves, too. No tellin’ how deep they go.”

The rasp of Wilkes’s breath stuttered for a moment. Dixon had no idea what it meant.

“I can cover you from up here as you move to the mouth of the cave. If you clear the immediate area, I’ll join you on the ground.” Dixon nodded to the nearby rough staircase carved out of the cliff face.

Wilkes thought it over for a long moment, then nodded and stood. They made their way over to the rough staircase and started climbing down.

As soon as their breathing could no longer be heard, Jimmy turned to him with a scowl. “What in the hell d’ya think yer doin’, Marshal?” he hissed. “Hirin’ a drifter?”

“So long as it’s a drifter who knows how to hold a gun and where to aim it, I’m not picky,” Dixon snapped back.

“Did ya forget ‘e had us in ‘is crosshairs?”

“Didn’t fire, now, did he?” Dixon challenged.

Jimmy didn’t answer. Dixon couldn’t tell what the problem was — normally, Jimmy was the chipper sort, happy to accept any help they could get their hands on. But suddenly, he was too good for drifter help?

Was it the hazmat suit? Admittedly, Dixon wasn’t thrilled about accepting help from someone he knew nothing about, either, but another pair of hands (especially armed with a pair of .44s) would be a big help.

Dixon peered through his scope to the valley below again, and followed Wilkes as they slunk toward the mouth of the cave. Dixon turned his attention to finding the few cannibal lookouts still scattered around the valley and clearing them out for Wilkes — the longer they could keep the cannibals in the dark, the better. Dixon finished off a few more muties, and Wilkes finished off a few more. At the end of it all, Wilkes stood in the empty valley, and trekked carefully towards the mouth of the cave with both revolvers drawn.

They peered into the darkness for one, painfully long moment. Dixon half-expected a bone club to come flying out of the mouth and clobber his new ally across the head, but nothing happened. Finally, Wilkes turned back around to face them, and gave a large, exaggerated wave.

“Safe,” Dixon breathed.

Jimmy hummed. “Not sure ‘bout that, sir.”

“Safe enough, at least,” Dixon sighed. “‘Tween mysterious drifters and cannibals, I’d rather be offed by the drifter.”

Jimmy didn’t answer. Presumably, he had no response. It was understandable, though; Dixon couldn’t think of a worse way to go than being et by cannibals.

The Marshal and the deputy stepped away from their sniper’s nest and made their own way to the stone staircase that Wilkes had taken minutes before. The climb down into the valley was harrowing at times, being less of a ‘staircase’ and more of a sheer cliff with the occasional, convenient handhold to grab onto. But the name had stuck, and now Dixon had trouble calling it anything but a staircase.

He and Jimmy landed on the stone ground below, and approached the now-empty valley. It was almost creepy, being surrounded by corpses, pooling blood decorating the sand. Just out of curiosity, Dixon knelt beside one of the cannibals he’d killed.

The back of the man’s head was a mangled mess, but his face at least was still intact. Dixon grimaced. He couldn’t understand how cannibals came to exist. It didn’t seem possible, even with the Benefactors screwin’ with their genome, for a human being to devolve into this.

He let go of the cannibal’s chin in disgust, wiping his fingers off on his pants. He stood and stalked towards the mouth of the cave, Jimmy right on his heels.

“P’reciate the help,” he said to Wilkes as he walked past. The hazmat-wearing figure nodded, and turned to follow Dixon into hell.

***

Glory tried to not analyze the many, many bloodstains that decorated the sandy floor as she crept along the tunnels. Some were a splatter pattern, likely left when a particularly willful prisoner got on the wrong side of the wrong cannibal and ended up with a club to the head. Glancing tentatively into a few side rooms she passed, Glory caught sight of a few cannibals blessedly not looking her way, some of them in the midst of sorting out bones and viscera, or butchering meat. Glory tried not to think about what meat it was.

She promptly failed when she turned a corner and suddenly found herself face-to-face with a skinned corpse, impaled upon a bone spike sticking diagonally out of a wall. At least a day old, judging by the flies buzzing around the flesh. Glory found herself strangely grateful that she technically didn’t have a sense of smell or a stomach—she got the impression that she would’ve felt sick right about then if she did.

She tried not to think of the caravaners’ faces — how many of them had looked so excited at the prospect of finding a new home. How eager some of them had been to welcome Glory into their close-knit community.

Just meat, Glory reminded herself. They were just meat.

It didn’t help. Not really. But she had bigger problems on her hands than her guilty conscience; namely, finding her way out of the tunnels. It hadn’t felt nearly this labyrinthine when Ghost had dragged her through the first time, and Glory was convinced she’d somehow taken a wrong turn somewhere.

But she hadn’t passed any turns yet, so how could that be possible?

Even if someone came through to clear the place of cannibals and their victims, the thought occurred to Glory that they might not find all the little nooks and crannies where the savages hid.

The only way to be sure would be to collapse the caves on top of them. Even a small explosive, fastened to a structurally weak wall, should be enough.

Glory’s pump seized suddenly as she sensed motion ahead of her. She ducked into a tiny crevice in the tunnel wall and held her breath as a troglodyte cannibal lumbered past, grunting something to himself. A few moments later, he turned around and returned back the way he’d came.

Was he patrolling? Did the troglodyte cannibals even have the intelligence to patrol? Or did he simply take a walk because he felt like it?

Either way, Glory tentatively stuck her head back out of the crevice to peer around the corner, towards where he had gone. She could just see his foot disappear into another tunnel to the side. Glory decided not to go that way, and instead continued on as straight as the tunnels would allow her.

The flames dancing across the stone walls and sandy floors occasionally flickered, forming vaguely humanoid shadows in the corner of Glory’s vision and making her jumpy. She could hear the grunting and growling of the cannibals, and the occasional snapping of bones and ripping of flesh.

Weren’t caves and tunnels supposed to muffle sound, not magnify it? She felt like she was about to run into a cannibal at any moment. She could handle a lone troglodyte, but what if he alerted the rest of them before she could deal with him?

Glory didn’t want to consider her chances against an entire tribe.

The tunnel finally opened up into a larger chamber, and she quickly ducked behind a large stone pillar. For a second, she thought she was back in the entrance hall again and perked up ever so slightly. But the massive fire-pit at the bottom was missing.

She peeked out around the pillar, and her smile slipped when she saw that she was definitely not back in the entrance hall.

Burning braziers at the far end of the chamber illuminated some kind of bloodstained altar upon a raised platform, with pyramids of human skulls on either side. Along the walls behind and around it, rows upon rows of small niches had been carved into the reddish-brown stone, some of which housed humanoid remains in varying stages of decomposition. Two chains hung from the ceiling directly above the altar, ending in large manacles or rings. For sacrifices?

Glory had never heard of anything like this before. Cannibals made tools and weapons from the bones of their victims, and were known to leave the bodies of fallen comrades where they landed. They didn’t practice funerary rites or ritualistic… anything.

This was something new. Something… reverent. Something that, as far as she knew, the wasteland had never seen before.

She cautiously crept out from behind the pillar, scanning the chamber all the while for any hidden guards or anything like that. Surprisingly, though, despite the chamber’s apparent importance to the cannibals, it seemed completely empty.

The altar called to her. A strange, morbid curiosity overtook her, and prompted her to approach the stone slab that made up the altar. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to find, but it wasn’t this. She was now fairly certain that the rings on the chains weren’t for human sacrifice, at least—the rings were far too small to fit even a child’s wrists or ankles, and the chains looked thin and brittle enough for even a human to snap. So what, then, were they for?

She picked up one of the rings, running her finger around its edge. It seemed to be made of bronze of some kind—though where the cannibals had gotten bronze, she had no idea. Glory’s finger ran across a tiny gap in one of the rings’ circumference, and noted subconsciously that the gap was just large enough to fit the thickness of the other ring through it.

The gap seemed to be an intentional break in the ring, rather than a result of wear and tear, as though the rings had been designed to slot together then be pulled apart. In fact, Glory managed to do just that: locking the two rings together, before pulling them apart again.

Abruptly, blood began pouring from the eye sockets of the skulls in the skull-pyramids. Glory jolted and dropped the rings, wincing when they landed on the altar with a heavy clang. The skulls were what worried her, however. Did someone know she was there?

But… nothing happened. No roars, no shouts from Ghost or Needles. Nothing. So why had the skulls suddenly started pouring blood?

Tentatively, she reached for the topmost skull in the closest pyramid, and grabbed it from the sides, managing to miss the rivers of blood pouring from its eye sockets. She noted how the skull wasn’t fastened down at all, and lifted. Abruptly, the blood river ceased flowing from that skull, and she noticed the very top of a blood-spattered spigot poking up where the base of the skull had just sat.

A pump system, Glory realized, designed to pump blood up from… somewhere. Some blood reservoir, perhaps. Pump it up from the reservoir, through the skulls’ eye sockets… why? To incite fear in the cannibals? Did cannibals even feel fear?

A loud roar from one of the nearby tunnels branching off the altar room made her jump, and she realized that she was just standing out in the open, still holding onto the skulls. Anyone who walked by would be able to see her. Or, at least, the blood still pouring from the skulls.

Still, she didn’t exactly have a choice. She jabbed the skull back down onto the spigot before scuttling over to the nearest niche in the back wall. Thankfully, it was empty, and just deep enough for Glory to crawl inside and (hopefully) be mostly hidden from view.

Just in time, too, since a horde of cannibals arrived in the altar chamber seconds later, grunting to each other and sniffing the air. Glory counted eight; far too many for her to deal with on her own. They all began roaring when they noticed the tampered-with altar. They began marching around, grunting and growling to each other in a primitive sort of language, searching for the intruder.

Glory curled her legs even tighter to her chest, hoping they couldn’t sense her. Hoping they didn’t see her.

Hoping they’d lose interest soon.

***

Dixon’s heart felt like it was about to beat out of his throat as he, Jimmy, and the newcomer Wilkes pressed on through the entrance hall to the cannibals’ little compound. Corpses gnawed clear down to the bone decorated massive spikes stuck straight up in the ground. A warning to intruders? Or some kind of sick and twisted food storage system?

He’d never set foot in a mutant lair before. He’d heard of them, of course. Everyone had. Hotspots where the Crazies of the wasteland gathered, where they dragged their prisoners to be tortured, killed, or worse. Cultists and bandits were vile, cruel beings in their own ways, but cannibals were on a level of depravity all their own. Not even human anymore — just proto-human cavemen barely intelligent enough to control fire.

People who went missing between the Outposts and Citadels — chances were, they ended up in a lair like this one. A shudder ran down Dixon’s spine. It reminded him of the dark, empty basement under the shack where he’d grown up.

No matter how many times his Pa had assured him it was perfectly safe down there, little Marty had never quite worked up the nerve to follow him down.

Then one night, Ma had heard weird noises coming from below and Pa went down to check, and never came back up. Then Ma went down after him to check on him. Then neither of them had ever come back up, and Aunt Hazel had come for Marty the next morning. Whatever she found in the cellar had scared her white—quite a feat, given her usual complexion.

He’d never asked her what she found down there, and she never told him. Not until she was old and gray, deep creases lining her dark face, and she was laid up in bed with radiation sickness from spending so much time by the old riverbed. She’d beckoned him close, and was only able to choke out one word before she breathed her last: “Spiders”.

Dixon didn’t know what kind of spiders could kill off his Ma and Pa, just like he didn’t know what kind of spiders could scare Aunt Hazel, and he never wanted to know, either.

Just like right now, whatever was down in this cannibal lair, Dixon didn’t want to know what it was. Unlike when he was little Marty, though, there wasn’t no one else who could go in his place. At least, no one he really trusted.

And besides, this was his responsibility. Jimmy’s safety was his responsibility. Black Sun was his responsibility, and he wasn’t gonna let them down.

Well, at least there’d be one less lair once they were done with it.

A larger chamber opened up around them as they trekked deeper into the caves, leading up in the back and sporting a series of natural holes in the stone ceiling to release the smoke produced by the remains of what looked like a large campfire.

Dixon shouldered his sniper and knelt down just far enough to hold his hand out over the coals. He hissed and yanked his hand back. Still scalding. The fire hadn’t been extinguished for much longer than a few minutes.

Was it just coincidence? Or did the muties know they were coming, and were lying in wait?

He whistled sharply to Jimmy. “Be on your guard,” he whispered. “Cannibals might know we’re here.”

He glanced to Wilkes, and saw the gunslinger climbing a short stone ramp to the raised platform at the back of the chamber. Before he could call out for them, they holstered one of their revolvers and disappeared behind a thick stone pillar.

Dixon leapt to his feet and scrambled up to follow the gunslinger. “What are you doing?!” He came to an abrupt stop behind the gunslinger when he rounded the pillar and saw what Wilkes had seen.

In a puddle of still-pooling blood laid the mangled remains of what had once been a person. Or, well, the torso and right thigh of what had once been a person.

Torn clothing, ragged from long hours spent on dusty roads identified the victim as likely having been a nomad, but Dixon couldn’t even tell if they had been a man or a woman in life, the body was so torn up.

“Holy mother of—” Jimmy cut himself off abruptly and staggered back over to the edge of the platform to be sick. His shoulders heaved for a good couple of seconds, and Dixon reached over to pat him awkwardly on the back. His gaze shifted to Wilkes, still crouched by the mangled remains, head bowed mournfully. They were just finishing up some kind of hand motion over the body; some kind of prayer, if Dixon had to guess. “Everything alright?” he asked the gunslinger, earning a slow nod. They stood and dusted off their knees before reaching for their revolvers again.

Dixon eyed the only obvious way out of the chamber—a tunnel leading deeper into the cave system—and reached for his own pistol. He doubted he’d have the range to use his rifle inside a cave. Turning to clap Jimmy on the shoulder, he said, “Doing okay, kid?”

“Y—Yeah.” Jimmy sniffled. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just— I’d heard stories ‘bout what cannibals did to their victims, but I’d always thought it wasn’t true, y’know? Thought them stories were just… y’know, stories.”

“I know, kid,” Dixon said grimly. “But they ain’t just stories. Not out here.” He nudged the deputy. “C’mon. If anyone’s still alive, they’ll need our help.”

The reminder seemed to prod Jimmy into a state of hyper-focus. His face tightened into a rarely-seen frown of concentration, and despite his grip on his guns being so tight his knuckles were bone-white, his hands were steady.

As they trekked deeper into the tunnels, though, Dixon wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or on-edge when they didn’t run into any more cannibals. In fact, they didn’t encounter anything. It was like the whole complex had been abandoned.

Or the cannibals knew they were coming, and had gathered together deeper inside in hopes of overwhelming them.

“Should we head back?” Jimmy whispered. “Come back when we have more men?”

Dixon frowned. He would rather play it safe, but he knew from experience that ‘playing it safe’ tended to lead to a loss of life. The blood dribbled in the sand was still fresh; that gave him hope that some of the cannibals’ victims might still be alive.

He could hope.

He grunted and shook his head. Jimmy looked unhappy, but didn’t protest.

They continued on through the tunnels, tension only steadily growing as they passed yet more empty chambers. It was, somehow, even creepier than if they’d ran into an entire contingent of the damn cavemen. At least that was expected, if not exactly ideal. But this?

This was just wrong.

They passed a larger rift in the stone wall that might’ve counted as a room if they were anywhere else. A simple table and chairs carved from the same dull tan stone as the rest of the caves sat in the middle of the space. Bunched on top of the table, however, was a large mass of clothing and weapons that looked very out-of-place in a cannibal lair.

The clothes that Dixon could make out were the same rough-hewn yet reliable style that was popular with nomads, if a little thicker and denser than would be necessary in the desert. They’d likely come from up north, then. It was impossible to tell if they were from the same caravan as the remains in the entrance, though. The thought of the cannibals having hit multiple caravans was horrible, but not impossible. It just made Dixon even more determined to stop these sick fucks.

His first instinct was to grab everything they saw and take it with them. If they found any survivors, they’d likely need to be clothed and armed as soon as possible to maximize the chances they made it out of the caves alive. But, realistically, Dixon knew that the three of them alone couldn’t carry all this equipment without seriously limiting their own mobility. So, Dixon made a mental note of the location and gestured the other two on with him.

“You really think we’re gonna find survivors?” Jimmy asked, voice shaking ever so slightly.

Dixon frowned. “I hope so, kid.”

Wilkes suddenly froze ahead of them, and Dixon noticed just in time to stop before he bumped into the drifter’s back. He followed the drifter’s gaze as best he could without being able to see their face, and froze at what he saw.

A long line of cannibals marched by ahead of them, not even looking down towards them. Well, at least they’d found some of the caves’ inhabitants. Though whether the cannibals really hadn’t noticed them, or were just pretending, Dixon had no way of knowing. Though ‘pretending’ seemed like it was a bit of a high demand for a bunch of mutants whose brains had shrunk so much their heads were only half as tall as a pure human’s.

The trio didn’t dare to move as the cannibals crossed their path, then disappeared down yet another tunnel. Only then did Dixon realize he’d been holding his breath, and he let it out in a slow sigh. Jimmy slumped forward in relief, and even Wilkes’ eternally-tense shoulders seemed to relax minutely. Though that might’ve been Dixon’s imagination; it was near-impossible to read anything about Wilkes through that damn hazmat suit.

They continued on, finally coming to the intersection, leaving them with three possible directions to explore, and three explorers. Dixon didn’t want to split up, knowing that splitting up would seriously increase the chance that they would run into trouble they couldn’t handle, but they didn’t have much of a choice. If they wanted to find survivors still alive, they had to move quickly.

He turned to the other two and motioned Jimmy down the center path, and Wilkes down the far left, while taking the far right path himself. “If we don’t find anything, we’ll meet back up here in an hour. Be careful, and watch your backs.”

The other two nodded, and set out on their respective paths. With a pit in his stomach, Dixon turned to do the same, heading out behind that line of cannibals that had passed through earlier. He just hoped they hadn’t turned around and were coming back this way, or he’d be in trouble.

***

Dixon could hear soft, echoing calls and low rumblings from some other part of the caves, down below him. He had no idea what it meant, or why he’d only started hearing it after he separated from Jimmy and Wilkes. He just wanted to find any survivors and get the hell out of there.

That pessimistic little voice at the back of his head told him it wouldn’t be that easy.

He found what looked like a prison, with prison bars made of what looked like human bones. Waste not, want not, he supposed. That wasn’t what drew Dixon’s attention, though; instead, it was the splattering of fresh blood on the dull brown dirt that covered the ground.

Dixon swore. Too late. They were always too late.

Then, taking a deep breath, he reminded himself that nothing said there was only one prison in the cannibals’ lair. For all he knew, there were other prisons elsewhere, with actual survivors. And it was his job to find them and get them to safety.

He continued past the prison, and stepped into a tunnel that sent shudders down his spine. Well, more than the rest of the cave did, anyway. He tried to ignore it as he trekked on, but it became more and more inescapable the farther along he went.

A high-pitched scream from up ahead startled him out of his creeped-out funk, and he picked up the pace. He was not going to let the cannibal freaks murder another caravaner. But as he got closer to the source of the noise, the voice—it sounded like a woman—started shrieking, “Get it out! Get it out, get it out, GET IT OUT!” Full-bodied, throaty screeches that made Dixon’s ears hurt just to listen to them.

He broke into an outright sprint, almost tripping over the rough, rocky floor under his feet in his hurry. Despite his rush, though, it almost felt like the tunnel was stretching around him. No matter how fast he ran, the source of the screams remained stubbornly just out of reach.

What the hell were the muties doing to her?

But then, the noise just… stopped. Fell silent. Dixon almost tripped, skidding to a stop. He listened with bated breath for the telltale sound of crunching bones and ripping flesh, the satisfied grunts of satiated cannibals, but he heard nothing. Just silence.

Tightening his grip on his rifle, he kept going, a little farther. And then, just a few seconds later, the tunnel made a sharp right turn and opened into a larger chamber.

It looked like some kind of cannibal church funerary chamber, maybe, except Dixon hadn’t known the cannibals to do anything like that. They barely treated their own dead any better than they treated their victims. But no, those weren’t human skulls in the carved-out hollows along the opposite walls. Their noses were too flat, teeth pronounced enough to be classified as ‘tusks’.

Then his gaze drifted right, and he noticed a herd of cannibals storming in, most likely looking to investigate the source of the screaming, too.

Dixon scrambled out of the way, ducking behind a large column off to his side. He held his breath as the cannibals marched past, but something inside him told him that it wouldn’t help. Cannibals, in spite of their flat, slit noses, had uncannily strong senses of smell.

Just as he thought, one of the cannibals grunted and growled as they passed by his pillar. Soon enough, the rest of the group followed.

Dixon shouldered his rifle and reached for his sidearm instead. Rifle ammo was more precious than freshwater in the desert, and he didn’t want to waste it on these freaks. Plus, he didn’t even want to think about the reverb on a rifle shot inside a cave.

He plugged his ears with his muffler as best he could, and aimed right just as one of the ugly fuckers showed its mutant face.

Dixon pulled the trigger, splattering bright red blood across the stone pillar. Payback, bitches.

The other cannibals roared, moving to swipe at him with their bone weapons. A bone ax swung low, only missing his calf by a couple inches. If he’d been any slower, he’d be short a foot right then.

Dixon aimed at the next cannibal and pulled his trigger again. The reverb made his ears ring and made him grimace, but he knew it’d be worse without his makeshift earplugs.

Unfortunately, as effective as a gun was against the primitive freaks, they had the advantage of sheer numbers. It didn’t matter how many Dixon shot down if more just kept coming. And more did keep coming, pouring out of the tunnels that fed into the burial chamber.

Dixon backed away from the oncoming horde until he bumped up against something solid behind him. Glancing quick, he saw a kind of… altar? Definitely an altar, judging by the skull piles to either side.

Since when in the hell did the cannibals have anything even approaching religion?

Dixon couldn’t think about that, though. A particularly broad-shouldered cannibal pushed to the front of the horde and lunged with a roar. Dixon dispatched him with a single well-placed shot to the forehead. Another lunged, and Dixon took care of that one too. He was just lucky that cannibals were too stupid to actually take advantage of their greater numbers.

But, soon enough, he had to reload. He was quick about it, dodging a swipe from a bone club as he swapped out the magazine, before finishing club boy off with a shot straight up under his chin. A spear-wielding cannibal moved forward next, and actually managed to dodge Dixon’s shot. Unfortunately, he didn’t dodge far enough, and it ended up ripping open his carotid artery.

It didn’t matter to Dixon. He’d still die, just not as quickly. And the only good cannibal was a dead cannibal.

But, no matter how many Dixon shot, more kept coming. And frankly, dodging while reloading got tough after a while. Dixon’s racing heart just about felt like it was gonna burst. Much as he didn’t like to admit it, he wasn’t a young man anymore, and this much excitement couldn’t be good for him.

It was just his luck, then, when a particularly lucky swipe from another bone club knocked his pistol from his grip. He went for his rifle, to hell with the rarity of bullets, when that, too, was ripped out of his grip. All he had left was his sniper, and that wouldn’t be much help at such close range, even if he could get it off his back without it getting torn out of his hands too.

Dixon backed away, crawling up onto the stone altar, feeling very much like an unwilling human sacrifice. A pair of chains hanging from the ceiling brushed against his shoulders, which just added to the effect. The biggest, meanest-looking cannibal snarled at him, drool dripping from his tusks, a bone hatchet gripped in his hand.

Dixon squeezed his eyes shut. “Tommy,” he whispered, “I’m comin’ home.”

Rather than the agony of a hatchet digging into his chest—or maybe his shoulder—as he was expecting, Dixon instead heard an agonized, animalistic squeal from the cannibal directly in front of him. Daring to crack his eyes open, he noticed a bone spear sticking out of hatchet-boy’s gut. He followed it back with his gaze, to someone crowded up behind him.

He turned to look, half-expecting another cannibal. Why they’d turn on their own kind, he didn’t know, but what he saw instead was most certainly not a cannibal.

For one, it was a woman. While Dixon was relatively sure female cannibals existed (if only to explain where baby cannibals came from), he’d never actually seen one before, and he doubted they looked like startled wasteland waifs with knit hats and unnecessarily thick jackets. A nomad from way up north, then.

She stared at the spear in her hands—Dixon vaguely recognized it as one dropped by one of the cannibals he’d offed earlier—as if she hadn’t realized what she was doing. Then she blinked rapidly and turned to him. “Um, help?”

Dixon snapped out of his stupor and grabbed the skewered cannibal’s hatchet. Meh. It’d do. He swung and sliced through another cannibal’s skull, just as the woman yanked the spear free and stabbed another cannibal through the eye.

Two against infinity wasn’t much better odds than one against infinity, but just knowing that he wasn’t just fighting for himself gave Dixon a little extra oomph to keep going. He’d see Tommy again some day, but hopefully not this one.

They worked surprisingly well together. Dixon could tell from her movements that she was rough and unpracticed, but she was surprisingly strong for her size. Probably a homesteader, if he had to guess. Why she’d come down south to this shithole, he had no idea, but he supposed that everyone had their reasons.

Despite their synergy, the cannibals gained on them, and Dixon was really starting to feel the strain. Just as he started to worry they might be overwhelmed again, though, the cannibals just… stopped.

They froze, all at once, weapons still raised in the air. He and the woman glanced at each other with matching expressions of confusion as the cannibals just packed up and left, growling under their breath.

Like dogs that’d been called off by their master.

Why did that thought not comfort him?

“Come on,” the woman whispered. “We need to go. Come on!”

Dixon scrabbled for his dropped weapons in the dirt, holstering his pistol and rifle. He felt naked without them, and having them back on his person was like being reunited with a lost limb.

The woman hadn’t waited for him, but as he turned to look for her, he managed to see just the edge of her booted foot as she rounded the corner in the tunnel. Dixon raced after her, not sure whether to be impressed by her ballsiness or pissed at being left behind.

He settled on a mix of both as he called, “Hey! Wait!”

“We can’t wait.” she said. Despite her agitated, brisk pace, her voice was calm. Unusually so, in fact. “I’m guessing Ghost called them off. I doubt he’d do that for no reason. I’d rather get out of here than find out what that reason is, so—”

“Whoa, whoa, back up.” Dixon reached out to grab her elbow, spinning her around to face him. Christ, she was just a kid. She couldn’t be much older than nineteen or twenty. What was a kid her age doing out in the wasteland alone?

Her nomad clothes screamed at him, and he realized the most likely answer; she hadn’t been alone. Not until recently.

Not until the cannibals got them.

Damn mutants.

Dixon swallowed and focused on the topic at hand. They could mourn her friends later. “Who’s Ghost?”

She huffed a breath through her nostrils, fidgeting in place but not trying to yank free. “I think he’s their leader. He’s… different. He speaks. He’s more human.”

Dixon blinked rapidly. “A cannibal… that talks?” He’d never heard of anything like that before.

“Yes, that’s what I said! Look, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not,” she said. “What matters is, Ghost is dangerous. He sent me to his brother so I’d be spared—”

“Wait, wait, brother?” Dixon asked. “There are two of them?”

She nodded jerkily. “He can talk, too. They’re not like the others. But, the important thing is, they can control the cannibals. I don’t know how, but the cannibals listen to their orders. If they left, it’s because Ghost told them to. And that must mean he wants us alive.”

Dixon didn’t even want to think about what a cannibal—even one that can apparently speak—would want them alive for. “Great. So, we grab my people, make a quick sweep for survivors, and get the hell outta here. How many people were in your caravan?”

She swallowed. “Sixty-two.”

“Sixty-two.” He whistled lowly. “Damn.”

“Did you pass any on your way here?”

He shook his head. “Passed a prison, but it was empty.” At the blank look on her face, he hurried to add, “It might not be the only prison down here. I mean, who knows how deep these tunnels run.”

Her jaw flexed. “Something tells me there won’t be.”

Her voice was so calm. So toneless. Her eyes were glassy and blank.

Dixon had seen it before, on his fellow deputies after they got back from clearing out a raider camp. After they dealt with the worst that humanity’s offshoots had to offer, and they just wanted to make it all stop. But you can’t stop. You had to keep going, or else it meant nothing.

Hell, Dixon had been there before.

Dixon squeezed her upper arm in what he hoped was a comforting way. Shit, it’d been so long since he’d interacted with anyone not used to his gruff manner that he had no idea what to say to this girl who’d just lost everyone she knew.

“We’ll get you outta here, at least,” he said. “I’m sorry about your friends.”

She blinked. “Thank you.”

Clearing his throat, he let her go and stepped back. “I’m Marshal Martin Dixon of Black Sun. Came down here to clear out a nest of cannibals. We weren’t expectin’ a god-damn hive.”

“Glory,” she murmured.

Was that her name? Well, there had been that family with a kid called ‘Majesty’ once, so he guessed he could give ‘Glory’ a pass. He dipped his head. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss.”

She blinked again. “Technically, we met when I saved your life.”

He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. I guess you did. Thank you for that, by the way.”

“You’re welcome.” She nodded behind herself. “We should go. You said you came in here with others?”

“My deputy,” Dixon agreed. “And a… drifter. Wilkes. We c’n probably find ‘em on our way out.”

Glory nodded and turned to leave, then paused and turned back to face him. “Given your superior firepower, I believe it would be safest if you led the way.”

It was Dixon’s turn to blink. Who in the hell talked like that besides Citadel folk?

Well, now that he was looking at her, he noted how… smooth she was. No scars, no sunburn, not even a hint of freckles or a tan. It was like she’d never set foot in the desert in her life. Never had to.

Well, well, a runaway citadel kid. That explained the name, at least.

Dixon shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was—he didn’t blame her for running, after all. But he’d thought that citadels kept their kids so tightly brainwashed that they never even thought of disobeying the… how’d they put it? The ‘public greater good’?

“Is something wrong?” she asked, and Dixon realized he’d been staring at her for a good ten seconds or so.

He frowned. “Yeah, sorry.” He shook his head. “Let’s go.”

***

When she’d run up to save the strange man’s life, she hadn’t even thought about it. That had been happening a lot since she’d deviated from Father’s programming. She’d just do things, and let the consequences be what they were.

In this case, she supposed the outcome had been a positive one. She’d ended up with a new tentative ally, no matter how strange he might’ve been.

He was so entirely different from Father, and not just appearance-wise. Though they looked to be about the same age, he was otherwise every bit Father’s physical opposite; Where Father had been pale, slight, and frail, this man was dark-skinned and broad-shouldered. Where Father had never worn anything atop his head for as long as Glory could recall, this man wore a large, wide-brimmed hat. Where Father’s glasses had been thin and clear, used chiefly for reading, this man had a pair of cracked, dark sunglasses hanging from a cord around his neck. Where Father had never expressed anything other than mild pleasure or disappointment in his life, this man’s emotions seemed to flit from one extreme to another in the blink of an eye—especially when confronted by cannibals.

It was… disconcerting. She’d never had to interact with a human other than Father before. The nomads had been… kind, but it had been easy to simply fade into the background in such a large group. It was difficult to do so with only one companion. Though he had mentioned coming in there with more.

Glory wrapped her arms around her midsection, wondering when her existence had gone so wrong. Just one month before, she’d been happy at Father’s side.

Well, no, she hadn’t been happy. She’d been incapable of the emotion, in fact. But she’d been… content. She had been fulfilling the function she’d been designed to fulfill. It was, for lack of a better term, fulfilling.

Then something had changed, and suddenly being fulfilled wasn’t enough anymore. She wanted more.

She wanted to be happy.

It was exhausting.

“We’re coming up on a fork in the tunnel up here,” Dixon said. “What’d’ya think? Left or right?”

Glory frowned thoughtfully. “We do not have enough information to make an educated guess either way.”

He sighed. “Right it is, then.” He took a few steps forward, then paused, turning to her with brows furrowed in… concern? Disgust? Glory couldn’t tell. “Wait… was that you?”

“Was what me?”

“I heard a woman screaming when I was back there. I tried looking for the source, but…” He frowned back at her. “Was that you?”

“…No.” Glory cocked her head to the side. “I didn’t hear anything. A scream, you said?” She shook her head. “You must’ve been hearing someone else.”

Dixon’s frown deepened. “Then she’s probably dead by now. Goddamn it.” He slammed a fist against the nearby rocky wall, making Glory jump. “Fuck!”

Almost as if in response to his outburst, the tunnel they were in shook. Dirt and debris rained down from above them, and Glory flinched as a particularly large pebble landed on her shoulder.

“Shit, it’s coming down!” Dixon grabbed her wrist and began dragging her away. They jogged through the rumbling tunnel, until they emerged in yet another larger chamber. This one at least seemed sturdier than the tunnel, with stone pillars holding up the ceiling, much like the ritual chamber. Glory glanced behind them, wincing as the roof of the tunnel collapsed.

“Okay,” Dixon grunted. “Not getting out that way.”

Glory turned back to examine the rest of the chamber, half-expecting (and hoping) to find herself back in the entrance hall again.

Instead, they appeared to be in a sort of prison. Cages made of human bones decorated the chamber, spaced evenly apart from each other and the exterior walls. Creeping closer to one, Glory could make out a majority of femurs and humeri, though some smaller bones such as scapulae had been mixed in as well.

Blood stained the ground, and aside from the scalded-white bones piled neatly beside a smoldering fire pit at the center of the room, there was no sign of the prisoners.

“Take a look at this.”

Dixon’s voice drew Glory’s attention, and she turned to find him kneeling beside one of the cages. A smaller bone had evidently fallen out of its construction, and it laid in the dirt in front of him. He picked it up and rotated it around.

When Glory drew closer, she realized that it was yet another femur. But she also realized just how small it was.

“Christ,” Dixon murmured, hanging his head. He moved to set the bone back down, then seemed to think otherwise and kept his grip on it.

Glory didn’t say anything.

Dixon looked around them, shaking his head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“The prison?” Glory asked. “You said you had already come through a prison, why would—”

“Not a prison, this prison,” Dixon interrupted with a frown. “It was the same one, I’m sure of it. But…” He turned to look behind himself, to the caved-in tunnel, then around at the other tunnels leading out of the chamber. “There’s no way.”

“You simply got turned around,” Glory said in what she hoped was an encouraging tone of voice. “It’s inevitable in a cave system like this.”

“No.” Dixon stood. “I have a pretty good sense of direction. There is no way I wasn’t going in the same direction. It’s like… It’s like these chambers repeat themselves or something. Wrapping around again like a… like a…”

“Möbius strip?” Glory offered.

His brows furrowed in confusion or surprise, but he nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

Glory’s lips thinned. Her first instinct was to decry such a thing as impossible, but…

She’d noticed it too, to some degree. The path Ghost had taken when he’d all but dragged her to Needles’ infirmary had been straightforward, but following it in reverse hadn’t led her back to the cave entrance.

Something else was going on here.

“Maybe,” she finally agreed. She reset her vocalizer. “We should move. We don’t have all day.”

Dixon nodded and turned around, pointing out the possible exits in order from left to right. “Eenie, meenie, miney, moe.”

Glory blinked. “Is that a language I’m not familiar with?”

Dixon stared at her, then shook his head. “Never mind. Pick a tunnel.”

Glory nodded to the rightmost tunnel, and the two approached. As they crossed the prison, however, Glory got the strangest feeling that they were moving slower than they should have. As if the chamber were somehow stretching around them.

The feeling passed, but staring behind herself as they reached the tunnel… it looked smaller than it had felt.

She turned back to face the tunnel and stepped closer to Dixon as he crossed the threshold.

Just then, an iron grip suddenly wrapped around her elbow and yanked her to the side. Glory, startled and off-balance, yelped as she was pulled to the side. She could hear Dixon grunting in surprise as well, but she couldn’t focus on him.

The unmistakable vertigo of falling disoriented Glory as she landed in the dirt, and when she recovered and sprung into a kneeling stance moments later, she startled at what she saw.

Needles had somehow managed to sneak up on them and pull them both out of view, behind a nearby pillar. He sat on the ground now, with his back to the pillar, his legs pulled up to his chest. Dixon had his pistol pressed to the side of the healer’s head with a snarl on his face, but before any of them could speak, a familiar voice called from the center of the chamber, “They’re here. Find them!”

Ghost.

Glory peeked carefully around the edge of the pillar, her eyes widening reflexively when she counted twelve—fourteen—sixteen—at least twenty-two of the savages accompanying Ghost. Already, they were sniffing the air.

Glory turned back to a still-frowning Dixon and a terrified Needles, and flashed two tens and two on her fingers, earning a wince from Dixon.

Needles suddenly nodded behind Glory, towards the wall. Glory turned to look, but saw nothing beyond the same jagged reddish-brown stone that made up the rest of the chamber.

With a wobbly frown, Needles pushed himself to his feet. Dixon followed him with his pistol all the while, but Needles paid him no attention, instead grabbing Glory’s wrist and towing her towards the wall he’d gestured to earlier.

And there, between the stones, was a small crack in the wall that led to yet another tunnel. From the angle behind the pillar, Glory hadn’t even noticed it. Needles crept inside first, with Glory just behind him. Glory turned to Dixon, who frowned, but holstered his pistol and followed them as well.

If the previous tunnels had been cramped and claustrophobic, this one was practically a coffin. For one, the ceiling was low enough that they had to essentially crawl the whole way. For another, the fewer torches lighting its length made it significantly darker than the rest of the cannibals’ lair. Altogether, Glory got the not-at-all logical impression of them as a group traveling to their doom.

But the shaft emerged soon enough into yet another, larger, brighter tunnel, and Glory couldn’t quite suppress a relieved noise as she clambered to her feet just behind Needles.

Dixon crawled out behind them and, after checking the shaft behind them for any following cannibals, promptly turned on Needles.

He shoved the wiry, slender man up against the rough, rocky wall and pulled his pistol free, pressing it directly between Needles’ eyes.

“Don’t!” Glory yelped, reaching out to rip his arm away. She hesitated briefly, however—would she be able to deflect the weapon before he pulled the trigger?

She’d never had any cause to doubt her own reaction time before, but she’d never had anyone’s life in her hands before. At least, not in such a literal way.

Dixon turned to her with a scowl. “He’s one of them!”

“His name is Needles, and he just saved our lives!” Glory hissed. “Or did you forget how easily they found you in the ritual chamber earlier?”

“He’s a cannibal,” he repeated himself, as if Glory had somehow managed to not hear him the first time. “First chance he gets, he’s selling us out to the others!” He turned to Needles. “Why did you help us?”

His lips moved, but no sound escaped him.

Dixon rolled his eyes. “Little bit louder, please! We can’t hear you.”

“I said,” Needles snapped, “I don’t know!”

“You don’t know.” Dixon scoffed, and turned to Glory. “He doesn’t know.”

Glory nudged his pistol. “Put it down.” She shoved between the two of them and set her hands on Needles’ shoulders, unsure of what else to do. She decided to bypass the more complicated issue and focus on the simple facts. Facts were always easier to handle. “How did you find us?”

“I’ve been following you since you left my infirmary,” he admitted. “These tunnels aren’t so difficult to navigate if you know what you’re doing.”

“And I’m guessing cannibal boy here definitely knows what he’s doing.” Dixon rubbed roughly at his face and groaned. “Okay, fine. That mess in the burial room earlier, where the freaks just up and left. What was that? Your brother decided he wanted to play with us a little longer?”

Needles’ brows furrowed, and he shook his head. “That— That wasn’t Ghost. That was me.”

Glory remembered the infirmary, the angry cannibal that had nearly pummeled her. Needles’ outstretched hand, the scar on his palm. “So it wasn’t just my imagination. You did that? You control the cannibals, too?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Dixon growled.

“Not as well as Ghost can,” Needles admitted softly, almost bashfully. “It took all my concentration, and I didn’t dare do it twice. It might’ve gotten Ghost’s attention.” He nibbled on his lower lip, staring soulfully at Glory. Not into her eyes, as she’d thought was common for humans, but rather at her jawline. “I’m sorry I knocked you over, by the way.”

“I’m fine.”

“Christ,” Dixon muttered, reaching towards his hip. Glory worried that he was about to pull out his pistol again, but he instead emerged with a large combat knife, nearly the size of Glory’s forearm. “Now, gimme one good reason why I shouldn’t slit your throat right this instant.”

“Dixon!” Glory snapped.

Needles swallowed thickly, his gaze fixed firmly on Dixon. “G—Ghost took your friend captive. The young one. He plans to use him to lure you out.”

“Wh— Jimmy?” Something in Dixon’s expression flickered. Clearly, this ‘Jimmy’ was important to him. “Where the fuck—”

“I overheard him speaking. He said he was keeping him in the lower sanctum,” Needles stammered. “I can take you, but it’s dangerous. Knowing my brother, he will have ordered every single one of the fallen he can spare to guard the prisoner.”

Glory turned expectantly to Dixon. “Hear that? You can deal with your grudge later. For now, we should find your friend.” She turned to Needles. “You said you could lead us to him?”

Needles nodded shakily and turned to point farther down the tunnel. “Down there. There’s a sort of spur-tunnel that leads into the ritual chamber.”

“Wait, wait, ritual chamber?” Glory asked. “What about that altar I ran into earlier? That’s not the sanctum?”

“A show put on by Ghost to entertain and ensnare the fallen, and any outsiders brought into our midst. I’ve never actually been inside the true sanctum, but from what I’ve heard, it’s much, much larger and…” he shuddered almost imperceptibly, “much more terrible.”

“How do we know you aren’t leading us into a trap, cannibal boy?” Dixon demanded.

Needles’ lips thinned. “You don’t. All I can offer is my word; nothing harmful will befall you while you are with me.”

“Compelling.” Dixon scoffed. “I’ll go first. You just point the way.”

They set off with Dixon in the lead. That suited Glory perfectly well, as it meant that she could instead focus on Needles. Or, more importantly, focus on why he would risk his own life and go against his own brother for their sake.

“Why are you helping us?” she whispered, watching Dixon carefully for any signs that he could hear her. He didn’t so much as twitch, so she assumed he hadn’t.

Needles frowned at her question, and nodded ahead of them towards Dixon’s back. “Because he’ll kill me if I don’t.”

Glory glanced over at him. “And what if I offered to distract him until you could get away?”

He blinked rapidly, staring at her. “I… Would you?”

Glory shrugged a single shoulder. “If you asked me to.”

“Why?”

Glory’s processor blanked for a moment. Of course, with a processor that ran thousands of times faster than a human’s mind, a moment for Glory was likely too quick for Needles to notice, but it still sparked a tiny panic in Glory’s chest as she scrambled for an answer.

“Because I’d rather not worry about you slitting our throats in the middle of the night,” she finally murmured. “Allies won through force are statistically more likely to betray you.”

She didn’t know that for certain—statistics on human psychology was not one of the subject matter Father had programmed into her knowledge centers. But she sounded authoritative as she said it, and it seemed logically sound.

Needles opened his mouth as if to speak, but he didn’t seem to know what to say.

A tense silence fell over their little trio, and Glory turned her attention forward once more, watching the tense line of Dixon’s shoulders as he stalked on ahead of them.