“Come on, get off!” Spence called from down below. He looked tiny, like a little roach, from so far away.

Gordon, on the roof of the old washed-out restaurant, shook his head and laughed. “You’re kidding! The best view of Tram is up there!” He pointed to where Hal was climbing. She grinned and gave him a small wave.

“Stop it! If you fall, what am I going to tell your brother? He’d beat the blood out of me, and you know that!” Spence said, voice cracking.

Hal ignored him, focusing instead on the rusted ladder rungs. Her hands were coated in dust and sweat, giving the cold metal bars a gritty feel. Only a few more. Almost to the top. Part of her wanted to give up on the dare, to climb down the giant M and follow Spence back to the Gate. Leave Gordon and Nav stranded on the roof of a building that should’ve collapsed decades ago.

But the other part, well, the other part wanted to see the best view in all of Tram.

“Come on, Hal. No guts no glory, right?” Nav’s voice, loud and penetrating as it was, seemed distant as Hal stepped off the final rung and onto the bottom of the sign. Bracing herself against the middle spike in the M, Hal sat down and pulled the flash camera out of her pocket. It was a crappy little thing, held together with duct tape and Elmer’s glue. Most of her pictures didn’t turn out, and the ones that did were of menial things. The ocean. The Gate. Tram building, in all its abandoned rubble-y glory.

Hal flicked the lens cap off-she still wasn’t sure how she’d kept track of it, after everything the dingy camera had been through-and clicked the button. A bright flash of light followed and a little picture card was spat out. Hal took the card, holding it in one hand while surveying her “one-and-only view of the city!”.

Despite what Gordon said, the M sign was nothing in comparison to the abandoned skyscrapers deeper in town. They towered over all the shorter buildings, some half-buried in their own ruins. From her vantage, Hal could see the Tram building, the tallest of all the buildings in the city. It stood erect, stiff and noble as always, covered in sunspots. She shivered. Tram building had produced the biggest number of sunsquallers out of every metal-lined object in the city. It was the number one killer, Nature’s knife. At least, that’s what Mac called it.

To the east, the ocean stretched across the horizon, the borderline between Tram and the rest of the world. Squinting against the harsh sunlight, Hal could just barely pick out the Gate and the jumble of huts behind it, starkly contrasting the sugar-colored sand. Mac had told her, quoting some textbook from before the sunspots erupted, that Tram had been an island in a chain of other islands. It wasn’t now, however. Those other islands were gone.

“Yay, you made it! Come down now, okay?” Spence yelled, hands cupped to his mouth. Hal was tempted to drop a rock on his head.

“Coming,” she called down, putting the camera and photo away. The picture hadn’t turned out.

The descent to the restaurant roof was slow, once Hal realized that going down was a lot harder than going up. After misplacing her foot for the second time, she watched where she was stepping.

“Hey, are those…birds?” Gordon asked no one in particular. Hal ignored him, busy climbing.

“Yeah, they’re birds alright. The real question is, normal or scorched?” Nav replied, the tilting sarcasm flown from her voice.

Hal looked up. Up in the sky, little specks of color were streaming towards them. In a detached moment, she thought they looked a little like splatters of blood. They were red, weren’t they? A ball dropped in her stomach as she realized what that meant. “Go, go! Scorchbirds!” Hal flew down the ladder, dropping to a crouch as she skipped the last five rungs. Gordon and Nav stood on the edge of the roof, squinting against the sunlight. Hal ran to them, grabbing their wrists and pulling them away. Hal dropped her hands to the caved-in section of the roof, where metal beams long since broken stuck out at odd angles. She lowered herself carefully through the hole, onto the ancient refrigerator they’d used as a step stool to get up. Her feet slid on the dust and broken glass, sending bits of junk flying.

“Spence, scorchbirds are coming! Go!” Hal hollered. She hoped Spence was listening.

Gordon and Nav followed her closely, hopping off the fridge and weaving through the piles of sheetrock and stucco, across the broken-tiled table area. Out the door hole, onto the street.

Hal gritted her teeth when she saw Spence, leaning idly against a totaled car on the other side of the road. “Let’s go!” She sprinted over to him, spinning around to see the scorchbirds in pursuit. They were closer now, forms discernible. Long, leathered skin a deep scarlet color. Wicked curving beaks, shining talons. Heatwaves distorting the air around them.

Spence turned with a look of surprise stretched over his long face just as Hal tunneled past him, headed to the east. He followed close behind, slipping into ranks with Gordon and Nav. Hal slowed down until she was running alongside them.

“Which way?” She asked between breaths, arms pumping madly. The wind rushed in her ears.

“Left!” Gordon pointed. They turned sharply around the corner, stumbling past boarded-up shop windows and almost crashing into a palm tree that had sprouted in the middle of the alley.

Weaving nimbly around it, Nav pulled out a hunting knife and used the blade as a mirror. “They’re getting close! Whose idea was this, anyway?”

Hal let out a dry laugh. “Yours.” It was true. Nav had been the one to suggest leaving the Gate during the day, even knowing that sunsquallers like the scorchbirds could be lurking. Of course, Hal couldn’t blame Nav for the rest of them actually listening.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Spence muttered under his breath. They skidded around another corner, dodging a group of skittering rats. Mountains of rubble ranging from trash heaps to tumbled buildings wooshed by as they sprinted away from the winged beasts.

Gordon, out of breath, held up a hand. “Stop, wait. How many are there? Maybe we can fight them.”

Hal shook her head and pulled him, Nav and Spence following, into a small alley hidden between two standing buildings. The blessed shade felt cool and welcoming on their heated faces.

“Five,” Nav said, still looking at her knife. “But they’re big. The biggest looks about the size of a pack dog.”

Hal shook her head. “They’re coming fast. We won’t outrun them, they definitely saw us, and fighting would be stupid. Five scorchbirds-vicious, skin-burning creatures with razor eyesight and a grudge for anything not sunsqualled, can-and given the chance-will tear us apart.”

Spence sighed. “How long do we have until they’re here? We need a plan.”

Nav looked at her knife again. “Maybe four minutes. I say we hide, find someplace dark and hard for them to reach.”

“Where? In case you forgot, none of us have been out this far from the Gate in the day. We’ve never explored this part of Tram,” Gordon said.

Hal sat quietly, thinking. Four minutes. The Gate was at least ten minutes away. They needed either a fast way to the Gate or a safe way to get rid of the birds. Why had she followed Nav? Taken that stupid dare, even though the chances they’d run into anything bad seemed small. Well, so much for chances now.

“Maybe we can hotwire one of the cars and drive it to the Gate,” Gordon offered.

Spence shook his head. “It’d take way more than a couple minutes to hotwire a car from the streets. They’re basically scrap yards on wheels. Why? I mean, how likely was it that we’d discover a sunsqualled creature? The odds were low.”

“Yeah, tell that to them. I’m sure the birds will just turn around and fly away after they learn that they broke the rules of probability,” Nav said, harsh tone making Spence flinch.

“I got it,” Hal said quietly. “The parking garage.”

The group considered the idea.

“It’s a few blocks away,” Spence recalled.

“And half-underground,” Nav said.

“It’s dark and crowded with old cars,” Gordon said, a smile splitting his lips. “Which means broken glass, obstacles, and hiding places.”

“Plan?” Hal asked.

“Plan,” They agreed.

The parking garage was thick with dust and rats. Just as they’d hoped, old cars and chunks of collapsed cement surrounded them. Holes in the ceiling, where whatever trials of time had broken through, let in pockets of sunlight. To the far left, an old staircase led up to the higher floors of a building that was still standing. Next to it was an unused elevator shaft. The air in the parking garage was stale and sinister, filling the space with an aura of stiff compliance not much different from the Gate dungeon. Hal shivered as she thought of what Mac would do to her once she got back. If she got back.

Gripping the glass shard tightly, Hal peeked out over the top of the car she was hiding beside. It was parallel parked next to a truck that was missing two wheels, a mirror and way too many door handles to make sense.

From her view, she could only barely make out Spence’s hiding spot near the stairs. It was furthest in the dark, where the scorchbirds’ temperature would drop dramatically. Their viciousness, however, would not. Hopefully, they wouldn’t see him. Nav and Gordon were hiding nearby, though Hal wasn’t exactly sure where they were. Preferably someplace safer than her.

Ten. Nine. Eight.

Hal’s mental clock ticked down the seconds. When they’d made it to the garage, the birds had been within shooting distance. Now, they were only so far away.

Hal waited.

Maybe the birds hadn’t seen them. Maybe they were safe, and the whole thing was just a close call. Yeah, that had to be it. An overreaction, that’s what it was. Nothing more, nothing-

SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWRRRR!!!!!!!!

Hal flinched at the roar as it echoed off the parking garage walls, ricocheting like a gunshot. Her heart hammered as she waited, makeshift weapon in hand, for the birds. Sweat rolled down her back and neck as something-she assumed with a trembling imagination, talons-scraped eerily along the floor.

Feathers rustled. Did the scorchbirds have feathers? Hal couldn’t remember or not. Why was she wondering that? The scraping stopped and a series of squawks started, the creatures communicating between themselves in an oddly infuriating way.

Hal suppressed a maniac laugh as a sudden image came to mind.

Bird 1: Hey, where’s dinner?

Bird 2: Finders keepers!

Bird 3: Skwa-skwaCOCK! I’m hungry for chicken.

Bird 4: That’s offensive to skwa-me. Eat your human and be done with it!

Bird 5: Yessum.

The picture froze mid-punchline as the squawking grew closer. Too close for comfort. Hal held her breath as one of the birds, probably Bird 4, scraped its way over to her truck. The tips of the bird’s talons popped into view. With dread, Hal noticed the six razor claws were pointing at her.

She looked up.

Bird 4 looked down.

Hal screamed, thrusting the jagged piece of glass up at the feathery demon. The hairs on her arm singed as her fingers began to burn. In a quick instant, her thrust turned into a stab. The bird stumbled back, looking down at the blood spilling from the new wound in its neck. What sort of bird has a long neck? Hal jumped up, clutching her already-blistering hand. The glass slipped from her grasp and clinked against the cement. Hal turned to face the other scorchbirds, watching from her peripheral vision as Spence held up his own piece of glass.

Glass. She needed a weapon.

The birds, heads cocked, sprang at her. Each one was about five feet tall with burning yellow eyes and long, ratty feathers ranging from blood red to dark pink. They ran rather than flew, with their wings tucked back and eyes locked on her.

Hal turned and ran, desperately searching for anything-anything that she could use to defend herself with. Diving behind a cracked pile of asphalt, Hal dug through the rubble until she found what she was looking for. Cocking her arm back, Hal threw a hunk of road at one of the incoming predators. It dodged easily, barely slowing stride. Hal yelped and jumped to her feet, charging past the next heap of junk and stopping at a broken car windshield.

With another roar, the bird in the lead aimed a wild peck at her head. Hal ducked, feeling her skull throb in the heat. Desperately snapping off a piece of the windshield, Hal tumbled to the side just as Nav yelled. The birds looked up, leaning agilely away from Nav’s knife as it flew through the air. Hal scrambled to her feet and took off, stopping a short distance away. She turned to face the approaching flock.

Bird 4 teetered towards her, somehow not dead. Gordon advanced with glass held up threateningly, ready to take the injured beast on. Its mates trampled past them both, all still fixated on Hal. She held up her glass.

Glass.

Hal turned as the idea struck her, running now with more commitment than she’d ever run in her life. “Spence, move!” Hal yelled as she tunneled towards the stairs, bolting past her old hiding spot. Spence jumped up, lunging out of the way as Hal bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The birds followed, claws clicking on the tile floor loudly. Hal dropped her glass and pumped her arms instead, going up one, two, three flights before tearing open the stairwell door and racing into the empty room. Old shirt racks and shelves flashed by as Hal rushed to the first window she saw.

The birds shot towards her, charging as a group. Hal waited, legs braced and chest heaving. She felt the heat envelop her as the flock came within pecking distance.

Then, just as the first bird cocked its head back, Hal leaped out of the way.

The birds smashed against the glass, shattering it in an instant. Squawks and roars resounded as the birds passed out the building and plummeted down. There was a tinkling sound as the glass hit the sidewalk, followed closely by a muted thump. Hal, breathing heavily, peered out. In a broken jumble, the scorchbirds laid, not moving.

Hal laughed quietly to herself. “Birds can’t see glass.”

“How’d you know that would work?” Spence asked, fists shoved deep in his pockets to hide the trembling that hadn’t stopped.

“I guessed. Actually, I was just hoping that they’d get hurt when they went through the glass. I had no idea they’d fall,” Hal said. She tied the bandage on her hand tight, fighting back a wince.

Gordon flexed his bicep, where the gash from Bird 4’s peck was. “Yeah, well I didn’t have to resort to trickery to kill my scorchbird.”

Nav laughed. “Oh yeah? What’d you use instead? A nice gravestone, since Hal had basically already killed it?”

“A slice in the gut, in case anyone was actually wondering,” he said, then stopped. “Look.” He pointed.

Hal let out a sigh as she spotted the Gate. Standing tall as ever, the barbed iron fence was set rigidly in stone blocks embedded in the sand. The razor hooks at the top of the Gate curved outwards, fending off the sunsqualled creatures that had infected Tram. The Gate was tall, at least ten feet high, and impossible to climb. Surprisingly, it hadn’t been that hard to sneak out.

Spence blew a shuddering breath. “I honestly-that was the worst decision in my life. If any of you go out during the day again, for no reason other than a dare, I’m not coming. End of discussion.”

Nav, suddenly serious, shook her head. “No Spence, we came out here for a reason. Our parents-” She cast a look at Hal, “and your brother, keep us locked up like prisoners. We’re never going to learn how to protect ourselves when they’re gone. We weren’t rebelling, we were going on a field trip to see and understand how our world works. And now we know. What have we learned from this experience? Take to heart what we have done here, fellas, because there’s a life lesson to be learned.”

“That was profound,” Gordon said gravely.

“Yeah, well, we killed five scorchbirds today. It’s a profound day,” Nav replied.

Hal shook her head. They might have killed some scorchbirds, and might’ve broken the most important rule in the Gate, and she might’ve climbed to the top of an M sign, but that was just life. She didn’t see anything profound about it.

“Hey,” Hal said, taking out her camera. “We need a picture. To document the moment, you know?”

“Yeah, okay,” Nav said, stopping. Gordon and Spence stopped too, though Spence cast the Gate a longing glance.

Hal groaned. “Aww, crap.”

“What?” They asked in unison, sensing her dismay.

“I lost the lens cap.”