The train squealed and rattled against its rails. Bent and broken wheels strained against the rusting bolts and failing scaffolding. Alexis counted to ten as it passed, cursing the slick mess of bile dripping from her mouth. The illusion that her hiding place was shrinking pushed at the edges of her vision and she fought to keep her eyes open.

"Come on Lady, hold it together. You can throw up the rest of your lunch after I get a chance to kill something," a voice yelled over the racket.

Malíce stooped behind Alexis, her red leather bodysuit creased uncomfortably as she folded herself into the utility shaft. The glittering array of blades and assorted weapons that wrapped around her sleek body, bumped and scraped the walls, her spiky red hair stabbing the low ceiling. Malice was all reds and creams beside Alexis’s toffee and burnt umber. The only hint that they were cousins was in the matching shape of their doe eyes.

“I always imagine, the next time one of these crashes, we’ll see it was secretly full of greasy sandwiches on dirty ashtrays.”

“I hate you,” Alexis spat.

“Sure you do,” Malíce replied with a wink.

Alexis wiped her chin with a shaking hand, looking back to the only way in and out of the utility shaft. A singled sheered bolt, at the wrong turn, would send the rocketing jumble of scrap-metal-disguised-as-a-train careening off its tracks. The ensuing pileup, at least what parts didn’t impale them, would slowly, agonizingly, crush any life that remained.  

Suddenly, the last train car flew past and fresh air washed over Alexis. The images of their impending destruction were replaced by gloriously rotting subterranean tunnel, and the broken sculptures climbing its walls. Only three pieces were still intact and spun wistfully in the breeze within the sheered and dagger-like visage. Ominous clouds of steam rose from the oblong grate beside them with the fetid whiff of sewage and blood. Malíce nudged her and together they shot out of the utility shaft.

Alexis adapted to each change in terrain effortlessly as she dashed wildly across the tracks. The job, she reminded herself, focus on the job. She slowed her pace, her eyes scanning the far wall as she jogged, looking for any sign of the monsters she had been tracking.

Alexis and Malíce had spent weeks in this one area, hunting the variations of undead created by the Church Everlasting’s rites and sacraments. Though the Scourge were supposed to be the natural aberrations of nature, Alexis couldn’t help noticing that the closer a sector was to a temple, the more of the Scourge there happened to be.

Sure enough, just as they passed a temple sigil on a water valve, a damaged access door appeared only a few feet further down the tunnel. The door swayed towards a pile of bricks that had once sealed it shut, hanging by one bent hinge. Crimson and brown fluid enveloped the coarse breach and continued in streaks and blotches along the walls of the narrow corridor beyond.

“Damn it,” Alexis cursed under her breath.

 She touched a finger to the cold, viscous liquid, holding out a glop of the fresh carnage as Malíce jogged up behind her. With a knowing nod from her cousin, Alexis ducked into the access tunnel. Her ocular implants took only a moment to adjust to the low emergency light, a perk that always had Alexis taking point and Malíce covering their rear.

The narrow, high-walled tunnel sloped downward toward the maintenance offices for this underprivileged sector of the city. Fresh blood and generous scratch marks marred the tunnel, leading them to bits of broken equipment and shredded uniforms. Alexis stepped over the mess so that Malíce could get a good look.

"So we’re looking at a flesh eater? I thought we cleared them out last week.”

“Apparently we missed some,” Alexis murmured, a familiar weight settling on her chest.

“What about that aged husk of a man we found yesterday? That had to be a Time Stealer."

“They aren’t too friendly with competition. It probably moved on already." Alexis lowered to a squat as she moved the blood-soaked cloth to the side. She plucked a small service pin out of the red soup and tucked it into her belt. "Whatever made this kind of a mess wasn’t alone. Are you ready to crash a party?"

Malíce stroked the flash-bang hanging at her side, "You know I hate getting all dressed up for nothing."

A proud little smile parted the storm on Alexis’s face. She stood and continued to creep down the corridor. After passing an array of abused grates and maintenance hatches, the smell of rotting flesh hit her. One look at the door ahead and she could see that the lock had been broken, and the door hung slightly ajar.

Alexis signaled to Malíce as she flanked the doorway. If the girls were lucky, one short hallway was all that would separate this door from a small, self-contained room of undead. Malíce took the flash-bang from her arsenal, held it up for Alexis to see, then counted to three before kicking in the door and letting the grenade fly.

Both women turned their heads, shielding their eyes from the blast and waiting. Their ears strained to hear any sound indicating trouble in the immediate hallway. The flash-bang detonated its eye-piercing light with a weapon rattling thump. In the remaining flare-out, the disoriented cries of revenants echoed back to them from what sounded like a large room beyond. Alexis knocked her assault rifle against her shoulder, Malice mirrored her, and the two charged.

A multi-level, access junction, with catwalks and a gutted station office, flickered in the phosphorus light. Dried bones and the rotten remains of victims littered the floor between ladders, piling up in the corners and around the file cabinets.  

Twenty revenants bumped and shambled toward the ladders along the edge of the room, repulsed by the fire catching onto the scattered papers and refuse. Their black crusted nails and ink veined arms battered the rungs without finding purchase. Alexis and Malíce simultaneously squeezed their triggers, unleashing a torrent of hot led into the mob.

Bodies twitched and shook as bullets ripped through them. Some of the revenants turned, clamoring for escape through blocked doors and tunnels. The rest turned their milky eyes and on their attackers.

Alexis kept her back to the wall, stalking her way around the right side of the cavernous room. The wide spray of her rifle slowed their advance, but only did preliminary damage. Bullets were fine for damage and could make a pretty little mess of things. However, to keep one of the scourge from coming back, their bodies had to be cut to pieces.

A revenant sprung at Alexis from behind a shelf. She jerked her gun upward, the close range shots nearly sawing the thing in half. As it spasmed to the floor, Alexis shot down the only two revenants that had managed to climb a few rungs of the ladders, sending them sprawling backward and landing with sickening twin cracks. For good measure, Alexis emptied the last of her magazine into the head of the revenant at her feet before pulling out her sword.

The blade swung gracefully, slicing through the rotting innards of the next revenant in range. Her practiced muscles warmed to the dance; carving holes out of chests and dismembering each rotting visage that she passed. Alexis drove her blade into the open mouth of a revenant behind her and then kicked another in the chest. One swift circle with the sword and both of the monster’s heads were missing. Bodies fell like black, wet petals around her and she started looking for her cousin.

Alex severed a few more limbs before Malice appeared across the large room, finishing her own group of revenants. She had a machete in one hand and a long cat-of-nine in the other. She playfully swung the cat-of-nine in a revenant’s face, the gashes it left hissing and burning as though filled with acid.

Alexis only had a split second to marvel at her cousin.

A door directly behind her swung open and crashed to the floor. A tall, pale, figure in flowing gossamer emerged from the wrecked office behind Alexis. Her black eyes flashed with white irises, her soulless gaze taking in the scene.

"What the-"

The Time Stealer’s obsidian lips gaped open, bellowing in frustration as she charged from the doorway and slammed into Alexis.

Alexis careened through the air, crashing into a rotting cabinet. Pain stabbed her mid back as her muscles clenching against the impact of the fall. The ringing in Alexis’s ears barely muffled Malíce’s string of profanity. Laying on a pile of rubbish and bodies, she strained to reach her fallen sword. One straggling revenant, pinned beneath the fallen rubble and barely out of reach, clawed and moaned in Alexis’s direction as she regained her bearings.

"What’s a Time Stealer doing with these cheap corpses?" Malice yelled.

"Hell if I know," Alexis wheezed, "but it’s getting away!"

The Time Stealer had already fled up one of the ladders and now raced along the catwalk toward the nearest opened hatch. Alexis pulled her sawed-off shotgun from her side and took her shot. It ripped through the creature’s knee, forcing it to stumble through the opening. Annoyed, Alexis aimed across her body and sent the second shot into the pinned Revenants face, just to get it to shut up. With her own string of curses, she wrenched herself out of the pile and climbed the closest ladder.

Rickety catwalks led out of the junction and across open tunnels of the sewer. The Time Stealer raced along them as best as it could, dragging its useless leg behind it. The knee wasn’t healing as quickly as it should, and bits of flesh were falling from the Time Stealer’s hands and arms.

So it’s been a while since you’ve aged someone to death, Alexis thought.

One shotgun blast caught it in the back before the creature changed directions, crossing a small bridge to the other side of the tunnel. Another shot ripped through the creature’s side. Alexis was gaining on it when it stumbled through a small access door and into a corridor that led directly to the sectors residential streets. Alexis could feel her pulse in her hands as rage engulfed her.

“No one else is dying tonight, you bitch!” Alexis screamed as the Time Stealer vanished from view.

She pushed harder, rounding the opening of the corridor and vaulting up its sloped grade. The Time Stealer was nearing the exit, the door already broken off its hinges. Taking careful aim, Alexis released a cold, steadying breath. She fired.

A blast to the shoulder spun the Time Stealer around. The last shot tore through its throat, sending the creature falling to the ground and stifling its scream. Alexis walked up the dingy tunnel to where the Time Stealer lay, oozing onto a pile of rubbish in the alleyway.

"Need a blade?" Malice called out from the opening to the sewer, tossing Alexis’s sword to her.

Blade in hand, Alexis looked down at the Time Stealer. Its throat was missing, and a wet gasping noise emanated from its lungs. With large doe eyes and a pouting mouth, she must have enticed an array of victims to their death. Her arm stretched down the alleyway, slick white bone grasping for some invisible savior. Alexis swung her sword around and took off the creature’s head in one blow.  

"Alex!" Malíce whispered urgently. Alexis looked to where Malíce was gazing. Down the alley, toward the street, there were five ghouls all crouched in an alcove. Their black, beady eyes glared at Alexis from only thirty feet away.

"Shit."

The Ghouls scurried toward them. Unnaturally long arms clawed at the pavement dragging rotting chest cavities behind them. Malíce could only get a single shot off before their pointy little teeth were trying to gnaw through her boots. Three had stayed on the ground, but the other two scaled the wall, attempting to claw at the girls from above.  

Alexis dropped the shotgun and drew her .45, shooting at their little bald heads like a macabre game of whack-a-mole. Malice preferred the two handed method, shooting and slicing anything that got too close to her. Once both girls had a pair of corpses at their feet, the last ghoul attempted to escape. He scurried across the wall and onto the ceiling of the tunnel the women had just come through. Twin shots caught the creature in the head, and it bumped and rolled into the river of waste below.

"Those little bastards give me the creeps," Malíce said, pulling a piece of cloth out to wipe her blade.

"Don’t clean up yet," Alexis said, "we still need to take care of those bodies back at that junction."

"But if they reassemble I can have a nice cool down session," Malíce put her hands on her hips as she added, "I’d hate to get a cramp later."

Alexis stared her cousin down. "You can cool down by making sure their corpses are in pieces. I don’t want to come back here because we missed something." Malice stuck out her bottom lip, shoulders slumping as she started toward the tunnel. Before Malíce got to the opening, Alexis gave her a playful kick and Malíce ran down the corridor laughing.

The laughter faded and a somber weight settled back into Alexis’s bones. Trying to shake it off, she turned toward the Time Stealer. Although most undead could be stopped by chopping them into pieces, anything that could rot and reform required fire. Even with a severed head, the Time Stealer was a few hours and one poor soul away from becoming whole again.

As she squirted an acrid smelling accelerant on the rotting corpse, it registered for the first time that the thing was wearing a white dress. The simple cloth was adorned with beautiful embroidery any bride could be proud of.

With a strike and a flash, the dress and the body in it were a bonfire in the little alley.

In the new light, it was hard to miss the battered condition of the street, the chipped and faded graffiti on the walls, or the limp pile in the corner. Back toward the main street, where the ghouls had congregated, was a body.

Alexis stepped closer, cautious. Her first look confirmed her growing fear. A child. A little boy, no more than three years old. His back curled as he lay on his side; his legs tucked slightly in front him with one arm across his chest, and one arm stretched out beneath him. He could’ve been sleeping.

Except, his neck was pulled back at an odd angle, and his throat was a red ruin. There was a gash on his calf and the beginning of a neat hole in his stomach. They had just started eating him. Alexis’s calm focus splintered, a cold emptiness seeping beneath her skin, compelling her to bend down and look closer.

The boy’s hair was blond, but you could hardly tell it through the dirt and grime. His body was too thin, his bones beginning to press against the tight skin. His eyes were a crystal shade of blue, staring off into the unknown. Softly, she brushed the hair out of his eyes. A harsh voice in Alexis’s mind told her that such a gesture was useless, but the gaping pain in her chest demanded she pull the child into her arms.

"Your bonfire is dying Lady, what are you staring at?" Malice said as she came out of the tunnel. She stopped at the sight of the child.

"Get me a sheet or something will you?" Alexis directed in a husky voice. Malíce stole a thin tarp from a nearby balcony and set it gingerly next to Alexis.

There was a cough and murmuring voices. Malice turned towards the end of the alley to find a small group of gangly, unkempt people gathered at the edge of a tiny playground. She advanced on them, asking a little too politely if anyone was missing a child.

The crowd’s voices carried over the lonely creaking of empty swings and abandoned slides standing in silent accusation. There were no missing children here, they said. No children at all.

The pain in Alexis’s chest turned to fire. Carefully, reverently, she wrapped up the tiny body, careful to leave the small pinched face uncovered.  

Alexis stalked toward the group, spattered with the gore of the hunt. The boy in her arms worked as an anchor, keeping her hands from her weapon as she stared into each pair of eyes, daring them to deny this child one more time.

Slowly, a weathered man looked up from where he sat, selling a few potatoes and spotted apples on the side of the road. He admitted to scaring the boy off a day earlier. The child had tried to steal one of his apples, but no one knew where he had come from.

Turning her back on the group, Alexis held fast to the child in her arms. Malíce came ghosting behind her.

 "Where do we need to go, Lady?" Malíce asked tentatively.

"Nicholas," Alexis’s throaty voice intoned, "we’re taking the train to Nicholas."