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four salvage boats on the shattered remains of the Louisville riverfront, she lost three experienced men in the span of a minute—one to drowning, while two were eaten whole by a crocodilian nearly sixty-feet long that had been waiting in the toxic muck under the bridge pilings. A lucky shot from her pilfered M72 LAWS rocket went through the beasts’ eye and detonated in its cavernous skull with a gelatinous thud. Her crew, now only nine strong, had spent two days skinning the monster, taking every claw, tooth, and bit of rib bone they thought could be used. The talons, nearly two-feet long, were blacker than the soul of a horse trader, and just as sharp. Cynthia mourned her lost men with a toast from her stores of honest-to-god bourbon, saluted their corpses that were now hidden in the gut of that unholy creature, and then stepped confidently into the debris that used to be a city.
    The find was life-changing. Her crew would never want for anything, ever again, and the runoff from such an enormous haul meant that she could trade at will with every township in a five-hundred mile radius. Cynthia’s team set about securing the opening with deadfalls and other traps; nowhere in the new world order did the term sharing ever get bandied about, and they weren’t about to begin charity work anytime soon. Humanity was important, but so was business, and Cynthia was an expert at making both ideas work together.

8
     

     
    New Madrid, August 4, 2074 A.D.
    From any height or distance, the town looked remarkably like a series of lumps covered in vegetation. Closer, the design of the houses became clear, and after the facts of the area became apparent, the residences appeared downright ingenious. Low, semi-buried walls left little above ground, and thus little to attack in the event of an overrun from Underneath. All of the streets bowed back in a crescent, where they eventually gave way to the sprawl of farms that provided the bulk of the food for the 1800 residents. The roofs of each house were cleverly terraced bed gardens, each covered in a riot of various herbs, peppers, tomatoes, and other plants that yielded high value with minimal work. At the center of the town stood the taller but still terraced Grange Hall, a modest building of one and a half stories that had actual glass windows. South of town, an active creek was dammed three times in less than a mile, and hydroelectric stations, small but effective, sat perched at each of the most stable bank areas. The streets were graveled and there were pads of concrete visible as well, although those appeared to be more for stabilizing the land than transportation. A single, well-groomed rail spur passed in between the town proper and the first fields. Slightly elevated and parked above an endless ribbon of chipped granite and schist, the rails curved off into the distance; two bright lines reflecting the sun until they winked out under the swell of ripening wheat and oats. The trains, truncated affairs of a kludged engine and a few cars, would arrive infrequently from either direction. There was a reasonably functional loop that linked up as far as the ruins of Chicago to the north and Corinth, Mississippi to the southeast. Their primary function was trade, but sometimes refugees arrived as well, usually a few days after the killing moon. It was understood that with each dark night of the month, another community, sometimes two, would fall to the predations of the hordes raiding from cave systems across the continent. The dirty, wounded survivors would arrive dehydrated and near catatonic. They rarely had any goods or trade items, but their labor and expertise were welcomed just the same. New Madrid had need of residents. Underneath did not stop claiming victims just because the lifeblood of the town was being drained away, one screaming kill at a time. Salvage was by definition an uncertain pursuit; the men and women risking their lives to pry goods from the dead cities could be