Contaminated

Detour

As we walked along, Mira would check her PDA every so often, and correct our path.

This whole place was a labyrinth of passages twisting every which way.

Riding on Asgard's back was more comfortable than I thought. Probably because the spines running down his back were retractable.

I looked ahead of us, riding on in silence. My eyes had adjusted to the dark a few hours ago, and I still could barely see the outline of the dirt path. Something occurred to me right then. It was dirt. Not sand. I sniffed the air.

With a grunt of effort, I slid off of Asgard's back. He turned and snorted in annoyance. "You know, I can't carry you to safety if you refuse to let me carry you."

"Wait," I hissed, lowering my head an taking a sniff. "Do you smell that?"

"It's dirt. A layer of soil left over from the initial nukes. It's buried pretty deep, though. We're maybe a hundred yards underground."

"I know it's dirt, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about that smell. You've gotta smell that."

He leaned down and sniffed the dirt. Mira jogged up to us.

"We gotta keep movin'."

"Wait a minute," Asgard said. "You're right. I do smell it."

"Smell what?" Mira knelt down and rubbed at the dirt. Asgard looked at her.

"It's water."

"That's impossible, isn't it?" Mira said, brushing away some of the dust. "This entire continent's dry as a bone."

"Maybe not," I replied. "We're a long way underground, remember? It could be groundwater that went too deep for the nuke to touch."

Asgard pawed at the dirt. "Or it could be a spring." He sounded hopeful. "Only one way to find out."

He dug his claws into the loose earth and started to dig. The hole was barely a foot-and-a-half deep before a trickle of water started to well up. It was tiny, barely qualifying as a puddle, but it was water. Asgard kept digging. More and more water started to fill the hole as it grew larger. I grabbed my canteen and filled it, then capped it. Mira had also and was about to take a swig when I stopped her. "Just wait. It may be too deep to be evaporated, but there's no guarantee it isn't radioactive or something."

"Right," she said, putting the canteen away.

We took a couple of canteens' worth of the water, putting them away. It was just then that something else happened upon my nose.

My head shot up as I saw flashlights waving frantically around the bend in the tunnel behind us. I yelped to alert the others just as a squad of soldiers came barreling around the corner, guns drawn. They saw us and opened fire. No prizes for guessing who they worked for.

"They found it!" One of the men yelled. "Take them out!"

Quick note: dragon scales are usually bulletproof. I say usually, because it takes a certain caliber of bullet to either punch through or shatter our scales. Sometimes it's most effective to use knives because they just slide between our scales a lot easier. These guys weren't equipped with any of the necessary firepower to take on a fully-grown dragon. Let alone one as big as Asgard. Needless to say, they didn't stand a chance. We were however on a time crunch, which meant we needed out of here. Fast. Asgard loaded me up while shielding Mira with his body. Even with bulletproof scales, bullets hurt a lot. They'll knock the wind out of most dragons. Asgard barely even flinched. He growled something about a new vest as we ran. The men followed, and there seemed no way we'd get them off us anytime soon.