Darina was tired, but thankfully not much incident had transpired in their journey to Moscow; she didn’t know if she had it in her for one more life-and-death sprint for today. Though they certainly weren’t fanatics, the bandits, just like the hardened people of the Wastes, couldn’t help but be superstitious. How could you not? Instead of saying ‘aliens’, you grew up calling the monsters ‘demons’. What was this fog but a reminder of how goddamn little humanity’s supposedly vast knowledge was next to the Unknown?<br/><br/>It didn’t help that she found no sign of her fellow bandits. Doubt began to creep in: what if they really had left her for dead? It wasn’t unlikely, she had even expected it at some point, but now that the reality of that probability began to grow more and more apparent, she didn’t know what she would do. Stick with this lot? Already, her enhanced senses had kicked in again, but try as she might to strain her ears, or pick up some scent, no sound, sight, or smell told her where the Reds were.<span style="font-style: italic">Pull yourself together. You’re not a child,</span>she thought, steeling herself lest the doubt grew into a kind of paralysis. All she needed to do was remember how her dismembered comrades looked, and take a whiff of the stink of human offal still sticking to her clothes, and her legs would forget their tiredness.<br/><br/>When they neared Moscow, Dar grew somber, as if entering a cathedral. Or at least that’s how the elders at the village described it. The bones of the old city struck her, just as they had the first time she had seen them. Like calcified corpses of gods, if they had existed on this earth. The older bandits had told her how Moscow must have looked. It was hard to imagine now, especially to someone who had lived her whole life in the Wastes, how human hands could ever build anything that rose as tall as the redwoods, and lasted just as long. Any minute now, and some disaster would topple these ruins entirely, or a gust of wind from the demons’ hell-world, wherever that may be, would make the whole thing collapse into ash.<br/><br/>It smelled of rust and things burned long ago, of oil and rot. Life choking on dust. She watched as the leader of the hunters went ahead, down one of the entrances, and it gave her pause. She had never gone down any of these passages, had been warned against doing so. If their group found cause to pass through here, or set up camp for the night, they never lingered for long. If she went down there, her flare gun would be useless. But she equally disliked the idea of remaining up here, alone. She had to find some way of signaling her comrades, should they come this way, leave some sign that she had been here.<br/><br/>Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she felt a pendant, some trinket she and another scout had fought over. She couldn’t remember now why she wanted it badly, other than just to piss the other man off. Some faded relic, a religious talisman. Obviously, whoever it was supposed to protect either realized its uselessness, or was dead, proof of the futility in carrying such charms. Making it apparent that she was tired, she made a show of huffing and trying to catch her breath, moving back, her eyes scanning the ground for a place to sit.<br/><br/>Finding it, she set her pack down carefully, hunched over it as if rummaging through it for food or water, then, as subtly as she could manage, dropped the pendant by her boot. While she dug out her canteen, she used the heel of her boot to disturb the dirt around the pendant, hopefully hidden by her bag. Her boot left a rough circle of dust around the trinket, while she swung her other foot, making her movements seem like a nervous tic rather than deliberate gestures. It was a longshot, really, that anyone from the Reds would spot it and assume it was her, but it was better than twiddling her thumbs.<br/><br/>“We’re really going down there?” she asked, but not too loud, and not to anybody in particular. Would the hulking man-monster even be able to fit down there? She didn’t like the idea of being cramped in with everyone in some closed-off space, like in a tunnel. Who the hell knew what was waiting for them there? Curiosity and caution fought within her, but in the end, the former won out, and she sighed, drawing her pistol and waiting her turn to go down and follow, trying not to imagine shooting at the darkness and getting hit by a ricocheting bullet in some macabre twist of fate.