Chapter 56: Not Human

In the week since defeating Lorenzo’s gang, Dean had kept the scavenged snowmobiles in heated storage. Their fuel had been siphoned and mixed with additives that enhanced its ability to thrive in the winter.

He had also spent a few hours adding simple modifications. Such as heated fuel tanks, storage compartments, and winter camouflage paint.

While the models were not the same as the two he had prepared for himself, the modifications added to them gave them performance that was closer to arctic warfare capability rather than just civilian enthusiasm.

Of course, there was a cost to these upgrades, and that was the fact Dean was now running low on spare parts. An issue that he would need to solve at a later time.

For now the peltasts gathered at the agora; Dean had brought the snowmobiles to idle in wait.

It was late at night while the young men stood faceless behind their balaclavas and step in ballistic visors. Blending in nearly perfectly with their background.

Dean didn’t stand on ceremony, he simply asked one question.

“Have any of you forgotten anything important? If so, go fetch it, there won’t be another opportunity after this….”

The Peltasts remained standing silently. They did not need to double check their equipment, they had already done so before arriving.

And once Dean saw that, he nodded his head in approval.

“Good, mount up, our destination is Archangel Raphael Trauma Center, keep your nods on, and your heads on a swivel. Because you never know what is out there.”

With that, the Peltasts hooked their cargo sleds up to their snowmobiles, and began to drive off into the great beyond.

Dean didn’t realize it, but a drone watched overhead as he and Peltasts left Elysium behind. Once they were out of sight it was recalled back to the balcony, where Yuki pulled the helmet off her head.

“Please be safe….”

—

The engines of the snowmobiles hummed low as the convoy pushed deeper into the frozen streets beyond Elysium’s walls.

Dean led the formation at the front. Two peltasts followed closely behind him while the remaining machines trailed further back, each rider maintaining careful spacing so that if one vehicle failed or the terrain shifted unexpectedly the entire group would not be compromised.

The streets of what had once been a quiet suburban district were almost unrecognizable beneath the snow.

Drifts had swallowed parked cars whole, leaving only the tops of roofs visible like tombstones scattered across a frozen graveyard.

Mailboxes poked through the powder here and there at odd angles, some snapped clean off their posts after being struck by plows that would never return.

The houses were worse.

Many had collapsed beneath the weight of weeks of accumulation. Their roofs had caved inward, exposing dark interiors that now served as little more than frozen mausoleums for whatever had been left behind.

Dean kept his eyes forward.

His visor reflected the faint glow of the moon behind a thick layer of cloud. It wasn’t true darkness, but it was close enough.

The snow itself gave off a dim white luminescence that made the entire world feel like it existed inside a muted dream. Especially behind the white phosphor lense of his night vision.

Every few minutes he raised a gloved hand, signaling the formation to slow as he scanned intersections and open roads.

Even with the engines running quietly, sound carried in the cold.

If anyone else were out here, they would hear them long before they were seen.

The convoy passed the first major intersection leading away from the neighborhood. The road beyond was buried beneath layers of compacted snow and ice.

What had once been asphalt was now nothing more than a smooth white highway stretching deeper into the dead city.

Behind him the peltasts followed with quiet discipline.

They had spent the last week enduring Dean’s brutal training regimen. Twelve hours a day learning how to navigate terrain, read tracks, conceal themselves in snowdrifts, and move without drawing attention.

The results were already visible. Not a single one of them spoke, not over the radios.

Not even casually. Each rider focused on the task ahead with the same quiet intensity Dean expected from professional reconnaissance units.

It wasn’t perfect, they were still young, still inexperienced. And a week’s worth of intensive training was not enough to make proper scouts. But they were learning and learning quickly at that.

The first sign that they had entered territory beyond the immediate outskirts of Elysium appeared nearly twenty minutes later.

Dean slowed the convoy and raised a hand, and the machines rolled to a stop. Dean dismounted his snowmobile and stepped forward.

There was a body laying buried partially in the snow. Only its fingers sticking out from beneath its mass.

He crouched beside the corpse, inspecting it briefly before shaking his head. There were no gunshot wounds or other obvious signs of trauma.

Just another victim of the cold.

The man had probably tried to walk somewhere after running out of supplies. Maybe searching for help, or perhaps looking for family who never came home. But he hadn’t made it far.

Dean stood again and gave a simple gesture… two fingers forward.

The Peltasts nodded. Within seconds they were back on their machines and moving again. The city around them grew increasingly desolate the further they traveled.

Apartment complexes loomed above the road like massive frozen fortresses, their windows dark and lifeless.

Some had been broken open. Others had been boarded up by desperate residents before the cold grew too severe.

Dean slowed again as they passed a gas station. The pumps were buried halfway in snow. The building itself had been looted long ago.

A rusted pickup truck sat abandoned beside the pumps, its door hanging open practically touching the top layer of snow.

Dean studied the scene for a moment before continuing onward. Places like this were magnets for scavengers, even if they had been swept clean already.

If any hostile groups were operating in the area, they would eventually pass through locations like this.

But tonight the world remained silent. Few would brave the cold after dark. The world grew colder without the limited light of the sun, and few had the ability to see through its miasma.

The convoy continued deeper into the city. At one point they passed beneath an overpass where the wind had carved massive dunes of snow along the concrete supports.

Dean slowed the machines to a crawl while navigating the uneven terrain, the engines struggled briefly against the incline; but the modifications he had installed earlier in the week held strong.

Heated fuel systems prevented freezing. Reinforced intakes kept powder from choking the engines. Within moments, they were back on level ground. And the hospital district came into view shortly after.

Even from a distance, the building stood apart from the rest of the city. Archangel Raphael Trauma Center rose several stories above the surrounding structures.

It was one of the largest structures in a city whose metro area before the storm was populated less than two hundred thousand.

Its massive glass facade had shattered long ago, leaving jagged openings that looked like the wounds of some ancient beast.

Emergency vehicles still sat in the front lot. Ambulances, police cruisers, even a fire truck lay half buried beneath the snow.

All of them abandoned exactly where they had been left when the world stopped working.

Dean raised his hand again. The convoy slowed to a stop nearly two hundred meters from the hospital entrance.

The Peltasts dismounted quietly.

One of them deployed a small reconnaissance drone from a hard case mounted to the rear of his sled.

He quickly swapped out his night vision goggles for the FPV goggles integrated with the drone before launching it into the air.

The tiny aircraft lifted silently into the night sky, its rotors barely audible above the wind.

The live feed appeared on the chest mounted end user devices that each member of the squad carried. Allowing them to seamlessly mark on their own maps where areas of interest were.

Thermal imaging washed the ruined hospital in shades of blue and orange. Dean studied the screen carefully.

His eyes narrowing behind his visor as he motioned for the drone operator to zoom in more. And there it became apparent to everyone in the group. With one of them, a boy named Zach, quickly blurting out his thoughts.

“What in the hell are those?”

Dean looked carefully at the thermal clusters, gathered together and walking on their hind legs in a way no human would ever do. And was quick to make a comment that caused the Peltasts’ skin to crawl.

“Whatever they are… they aren’t human….”

The drone flew closer to the window to get a better look at the unidentified targets. The thermal signatures now clearly giving off the distinctive silhouette of apes nesting in the very wing of the hospital they needed to gain access to.

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