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conglomeration of different, mundane items: dimes and quarters, a green marble, coiled copper wire, two triple-A batteries, and other things, all wrapped in gold chain and blue thread. It wasn’t big, Mira could hold the entire packet in her fist, and it was attached to a large watch band.
    It was an artifact combination called a Dampener that she’d made before entering the dam. It would absorb all the radiation and heat the plutonium naturally gave off, making it safe to carry.
    She quickly wrapped the band around the cylinder and tightened it. When the object touched the glass, there was a spark of light … and then a hum, like something electrical powering up. Mira felt the hair on her arms stand up at the charge.
    When it was done, she held the cylinder up and studied it in the light from the lantern like a priceless treasure …
    … just as the crates above her suddenly began to topple over.
    In their fervor to reach her, some of the Fallout Swarm had climbed on top of the crates, shrieking and clicking, piling more and more of themselves on top of the stack … until it was too much.
    The crates tumbled downward to the floor in a cascade, and Mira leapt away. She barely avoided them as they crashed down all around her, slamming into the floor and bursting apart.
    Mira hit the ground hard and rolled away.
    As she did, the lantern came loose, sliding away. It couldn’t break, but the flame on the wick snuffed out regardless.
    The vital, protective light it offered died, and everything plunged to black.
    The glass cylinder skittered out of her grasp, rolling into the shadows.
    Mira stared around her as ghostly shrieks shouted out and filled the huge room with frightening power. But the shrieks weren’t ones of anger or pain this time. They were shrieks of glee.
    Mira couldn’t see them, but she knew they were coming, heard their slithering bodies dragging themselves across the floor toward her.
    “Well, crap…,” she said, and yanked her flashlight loose once again. The light it emitted was puny compared to the lantern: it barely lit anything around her. Two of the creatures lunged for her from the dark, and she shone it right at them. They withdrew a little ways. But there were more. Many more.
    In the decayed beam from her flashlight, she saw the Fallout Swarm streaming down toward her from every direction, unafraid now, hungry, angry, obsessed. Teeth and jaws and writhing mouths formed and jutted out from their bodies, ready to tear her to shreds. The clicking and gnashing of teeth echoed everywhere.
    Mira knew she was done for. Whatever she did, she was just stalling the inevitable. She didn’t feel fear now, just bitterness and frustration at having come so far and so close. Mira hated to fail more than anything, and she had failed gloriously here. She thought of goals unmet, promises she couldn’t keep, and her anger began to rise.
    She had been so close.
    Nearby, she saw the outline of the glass cylinder, just out of reach. There had to be a way out. There had to be.…
    Mira pushed herself into a corner, keeping the creatures at bay with the flashlight beam, shining it in every direction as the things screeched and leapt for her, only to withdraw at the last moment.
    And, as bad as things were, she noticed something worse. The flashlight, her pathetic source of protection, was beginning to fade. Its batteries were running out. When they did, she would be all alone as the darkness consumed her.

 
    6. SWARM
    MIRA HUDDLED IN THE CORNER of the giant dark room, trying in vain to push her back farther into the wall. But there was nowhere else to go.
    The Fallout Swarm screeched and clicked and scratched everywhere, shadows of dripping, putrid ooze full of claws and teeth darted in at her, only to be repelled by her flashlight.
    But that wasn’t going to last much longer.
    It would be over soon, and given how many of the things there were, it would be over fairly quickly. It was the one consolation she