Warnings: some violence, fairly explicit sexual content Word count ~2920
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Everyone knows that the interstates are more likely to take you to hell than they are to the next city.
Infinitely long stretches of broken concrete run through wasteland that's inhabited only by creatures that can survive the baking days, the freezing nights, the radiation leaking through the jagged rips in the sky. Chitauri stalk the heavy chain fence that runs along the road; half-starved human exiles wriggle through breaks to snatch lone children; Shi'ar and Wraiths and Kree roam the desert beyond in ragtag groups that turn on each other as quickly as they do travellers. No-one is safe beneath the flickering light of the unnatural heavens, and if you're not alert then you're not alive.
Natasha has been travelling across the states for the past nineteen months. SHIELD sent her out with a list of items to collect from Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Phoenix, Albuquerque; the last big cities to survive, heavily guarded by mercenaries who protect their own by killing anyone trying to take from them. The journey out took eleven months, hitching lifts from the few people who still had trucks or, more often, horses or oxen. The journey back should have only taken four, sped by the supply train she'd bought passage on through New Mexico and Texas, but she'd spent six weeks at the Jackson outpost in Mississippi recovering from a Reptoid bite to the abdomen.
Now though, she's back in New York, where the light is natural if dim and there are no aliens save for the wisps of energy that drift along the empty streets, through walls, hang above rubble and cast misshapen shadows along the dusty ground. The streets are empty on the outskirts this time of night but that doesn't mean it's safe. Natasha's had her guns in hand since she set foot inside the perimeter. Anyone who has never been to New York thinks it's a protected haven, the place from which the technology came to shift the portals from above the cities to miles out over smaller settlements, but the truth of the matter is that humans are ugly creatures when their city is overcrowded and resources are thin on the ground. Here the city code is lock and load, and you'd better be ready to prove you can follow it if you want to live.
Full fic at my journal (http://flying-android.livejournal.com/30287.html#cutid1)
Fic: Here the City Code is Lock and Load, Rating: M
Word count ~2920
-- -- -- -- --
Everyone knows that the interstates are more likely to take you to hell than they are to the next city.
Infinitely long stretches of broken concrete run through wasteland that's inhabited only by creatures that can survive the baking days, the freezing nights, the radiation leaking through the jagged rips in the sky. Chitauri stalk the heavy chain fence that runs along the road; half-starved human exiles wriggle through breaks to snatch lone children; Shi'ar and Wraiths and Kree roam the desert beyond in ragtag groups that turn on each other as quickly as they do travellers. No-one is safe beneath the flickering light of the unnatural heavens, and if you're not alert then you're not alive.
Natasha has been travelling across the states for the past nineteen months. SHIELD sent her out with a list of items to collect from Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Phoenix, Albuquerque; the last big cities to survive, heavily guarded by mercenaries who protect their own by killing anyone trying to take from them. The journey out took eleven months, hitching lifts from the few people who still had trucks or, more often, horses or oxen. The journey back should have only taken four, sped by the supply train she'd bought passage on through New Mexico and Texas, but she'd spent six weeks at the Jackson outpost in Mississippi recovering from a Reptoid bite to the abdomen.
Now though, she's back in New York, where the light is natural if dim and there are no aliens save for the wisps of energy that drift along the empty streets, through walls, hang above rubble and cast misshapen shadows along the dusty ground. The streets are empty on the outskirts this time of night but that doesn't mean it's safe. Natasha's had her guns in hand since she set foot inside the perimeter. Anyone who has never been to New York thinks it's a protected haven, the place from which the technology came to shift the portals from above the cities to miles out over smaller settlements, but the truth of the matter is that humans are ugly creatures when their city is overcrowded and resources are thin on the ground. Here the city code is lock and load, and you'd better be ready to prove you can follow it if you want to live.
Full fic at my journal (http://flying-android.livejournal.com/30287.html#cutid1)