No Return: Ashes and Iron

The darkness behind Silas’s eyelids wasn't the clean, quiet dark of sleep. It was heavy, hot, and throbbed in direct sync with the sickening pulse behind his left temple.

When he finally managed to pry his eyes open, the world tilted violently. The ceiling was a cracked expanse of yellowed plaster, crisscrossed by thick, exposed wooden laths that looked like the exposed ribs of some ancient beast. Particles of grey dust danced in a narrow, brilliant beam of sunlight cutting through a high, grimy slit in the wall.

Silas groaned, the sound grating in his parched throat. He reached up with a trembling hand, his fingers tenderly probing the side of his head just above the ear. No wetness. No stickiness of dried copper. But beneath the skin, a swollen, agonizing knot throbbed like a drumbeat.

Concussion. He knew the word. The Elder had taught him that one during the winter fever two years ago.

He lay flat on his back for several long minutes, breathing in the stale, chalky air, waiting for the nausea to settle. At twenty-four years old, Silas had known only two constant truths in his life: the group was survival, and the world outside was a graveyard. He had been born long after the Sky Burned—after the great iron cities crumbled and the old ones vanished into history. He had never seen a working machine, never tasted fresh water that hadn't been boiled twice, and had never known a night without a guard posted at his shoulder.

So why was he alone?

The memory of how he got here was a jagged edge. There had been a scout run—a scav-push into the sunken ruins of what the Old World called a "suburb." They had been moving through the low briars, looking for preserved tin or brass fittings, when the wind shifted. A sound—a screech like metal tearing on stone—had cracked through the silence. Then came the rush of footsteps, the frantic bark of orders from Vance, their track-leader, and a sudden, blinding flash of pain as something heavy slammed into the side of Silas’s head.

After that, nothing.

Silas forced himself up into a seated position. His vision swam with spots of light before slowly snapping back into focus. He took stock of his surroundings.

He was sitting on a cold, cracked concrete floor inside a small, boxy room. The walls were lined with rotting wooden shelves that sagged under the weight of decaying paper and rusted metal brackets. To any inhabitant of the Old World, it might have been an office supply closet or a utility room. To Silas, it was just another relic—a stone box built by dead giants who had too many things and too much time.

His eyes darted around the confined space, searching for his pack.

It lay roughly three feet away, slumped against a fallen metal cabinet like a corpse. Silas dragged himself over, his limbs feeling heavy and unresponsive, and pulled the canvas bag into his lap. His heart sank as his hand slipped inside.

The top flap was undone, the buckle unfastened. The carefully wrapped strip of salted meat was gone. His flint kit—vanished. His iron knife—gone.

Frantic now, Silas tipped the canvas bag upside down and shook it.

Two small, heavy items tumbled onto the dust-covered concrete with a dull clunk, followed by a soft, slouching thud.

Silas stared down at his remaining earthly possessions: two severely dented, unlabelled tin cans—their paper sleeves long since rotted away—and his leather water pouch. He snatched up the water skin and unstopped the wooden peg at its spout. He swished it gently near his ear.

It was less than half full. A few meager swallows, maybe three if he rationed them with extreme discipline.

Nausea flared again, this time driven by a cold spike of panic. Did they leave me? Did they strip my pack and throw me away?

He swallowed hard, fighting down the bitterness in his throat. He looked toward the only way out: a thick, heavy oak door.

He crawled toward it, his knees scraping over grit and broken glass. He reached for the tarnished brass handle and twisted. It didn't budge. He threw his shoulder against the wood with a dull, heavy thud. The door rattled within its frame, but it held firm.

Silas paused, leaning his forehead against the cool oak, his chest heaving. It was then that he noticed the details around the frame.

The door hadn't been locked from the outside with a key—the lock mechanism itself was broken, rusted solid long before Silas was born. Instead, thick wooden beams from the collapsed shelving had been wedged tightly underneath the door handle from inside the room before the door was pulled shut, or rather, heavy iron bolts had been slammed home from the outer hallway, accompanied by a massive metal filing cabinet that he could hear faintly scraping against the exterior floor when he pressed his ear to the wood.

Wait.

He leaned closer, examining the heavy wooden wedge driven tightly under the bottom gap of the door. The fresh shavings on the wood were undeniable. Someone had notched that wood with an axe—Vance’s axe.

Silas blinked, his mind piecing the puzzle together through the haze of his concussion.

They hadn't robbed him and left him to die. They had been pursued. Whatever had made that tearing screech in the briars had cornered them. Silas had gone down, dead weight, completely unconscious. They couldn't carry an immobile man through a hot zone without everyone dying.

So they had dragged him into the strongest structure nearby, tucked him into a dead-end room, stripped his pack of the heavy survival gear they desperately needed to survive the run or lure the threat away, and barricaded him inside. They had left him the cans and the water—everything they could spare without starving themselves on the retreat.

They hadn't abandoned him to perish. They had bought him time.

"Hold fast, Silas," he whispered to the empty room, the sound of his own voice strangely foreign in the quiet. "They're waiting at the Ridge. Or they're coming back."

He needed to move. Standing up fully for the first time, the room spun again, but Silas braced his hip against a wall and waited for the dizziness to pass. He was twenty-four, strong, and raised on scarcity. A head injury wouldn't claim him today.

He looked around the room for a tool. The barricade outside was heavy, and whatever held the door wouldn't yield to bare hands.

His eyes scanned the rotting shelves and the accumulated detritus of the ancient world. Half-melted plastic tubs, moldering books whose language had dissolved into black sludge, crushed aluminum. Then, partially buried under a pile of collapsed ceiling tiles near the far corner, something caught the pale ray of sunlight.

Silas walked over, his boots crunching on plaster, and kicked the debris aside.

It was a piece of salvaged construction—a steel rebar rod, roughly three feet long and an inch thick. It was pitted with dark red rust along its ridges, but when Silas picked it up, the weight of it was substantial, solid, and unforgiving. It wasn't an iron sword like the stories of the Old World spoke of, but it was lever, hammer, and weapon all at once.

He gripped the center of the steel rod, testing its balance. The rough surface bit into his calloused palm.

He returned to his gear. Carefully, he packed the two dented cans into the bottom of his canvas bag. He slung the leather water pouch over his shoulder, feeling its light, terrifyingly meager weight rest against his hip. Finally, he tightened his belt and tucked the steel rod into his loop.

Silas turned back to the barricaded door. Outside that thick oak barrier lay miles of untamed, ruined wilderness, beasts he had no names for, and a scorched world he had only ever navigated with ten pairs of eyes watching his back. Now, he had only his own.

He jammed the flat, rusted tip of the steel rod into the seam between the door and the frame.

"I'm coming," Silas muttered, and leveraged his weight against the bar.