Read The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) for Free Online

Lilly pulled me back and delivered a vicious kick. The door smacked open, yawning inward on one hinge.
    “Nice,” I said, turning to smile at Lilly, but she’d already headed back to the craft. I stepped into the doorway. “Stairway into darkness,” I reported. I started down, but Lilly grabbed my arm again.
    She’d gotten her knife, the one she’d taken from a Nomad body back in Eden. “You should stay,” she said. “We can’t leave the ship unguarded. We’d be screwed without it, and you’re the only one who can fly it.”
    “Makes sense,” Leech agreed, joining her.
    “You’re staying, too,” she said to Leech. “You’re the two who have to get to Atlantis.” She slipped the knife in her belt. “I’m the expendable one.”
    “Hey,” I started, “we don’t know that for sure—”
    “Don’t,” said Lilly. She rubbed at her gills, grimacing. “I’ll scout it out and come back with a report.” She started down the stairs.
    Leech gave me a slight nod and started after her.
    When Lilly turned, he said, “I’m gonna watch your back.”
    “I don’t need—”
    Leech brushed past her. “Okay, you watch mine. Going in there alone is stupid and you know it.”
    Lilly grabbed Leech by the shoulder and stepped in front of him. “Fine, but you follow me.”
    Leech fell into step behind her. As he turned and started down the next set of stairs, he looked up at me. I nodded, knowing he actually meant it as a kind of pact between us this time, rather than as a challenge.
    Their footsteps slapped on the concrete stairs. The sound faded away, and then I was alone with the hollow afternoon wind, waterless, bracing my skin with grains of sand.
    I kicked at the side of the ship, hating that Lilly was down in the dark, and it wasn’t me that was with her. I thought about going down anyway, but she was right. If anything happened to the ship, we were goners. But still . . . I wondered if I was even on her mind right now, or if it was just Evan. I knew that wasn’t fair of me, probably wasn’t even true, but I couldn’t help it.
    The sun beat down on me. I thought to stand in the shade of the doorway, but first I walked around the perimeter of the roof, scanning the horizon. The distant stone hills were still, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Eden was out there somewhere, that they were watching. I looked down the streets leading away in right angles, each ending at a section of the wall, half-expecting to see gold-visored peace forces lunging over the jagged battlements.
    I passed close to the front of the store, and paused to look at the body on the flagpole. It had been lashed to the pole with thick purple ropes, like the kind of cord you’d use for cave diving or mountain climbing. There were two big awkward knots, one at the waist and one at the neck, and the body was slumped over to the side. It was dressed in a white shirt and pants. There were stains on it, patches of burned reds and black, but overall the clothing and the body seemed to be in better shape than the one we’d seen on the wall. Maybe this one wasn’t quite as old.
    I thought of what Lilly had said, this morning: Why should we save this world, when things like this can happen? I wondered what would lead people to do this. Madness, I guessed. I remembered hearing stories of massacres, mass suicides and genocides as resources dried up. There had been some weird stuff, too, about when EdenSouth fell to the Heliad-7 cult, rumors of human sacrifice and even cannibalism, but I never paid too much attention to the news programs my dad would have on in the mornings. Other than the sports, most of the news was just dark and depressing.
    I figured these bodies were supposed to be warnings. And what had become of the people who’d killed this person? Had they left? Died themselves? Or were they still here, somewhere? Probably not, given the state of things. But I still felt my nerves humming, and wanted to get moving.
    Beware the