Pip groaned. She felt numb all over.

Do I still have arms and legs? Or a body? Or a head? Maybe I’m dead? Although she always thought being dead would feel more floaty and ghostlike, or kind of like being a cloud. As feeling came back she just felt like lead all over, instead. I must still be alive.

She lay on her side across the tram bench, with one arm still caught in the railing at an awkward angle. Her backpack was under her, and her back was bent funny, tilting her head and shoulders sharply backward. Long grass poked through the shattered window near her head, bending over the remains of the lost kitten’s paws. She pulled her noodle-limp arm to the bench beside her and then forced her body over onto its back. But as she rolled, she found that the floor was now the wall and she was nearly standing on her head. She flopped to the planking under the broken kitten window. Dust and broken glass rustled and crunched as she moved. Dim sunlight peeked in through the smashed windows all along the tram’s portside wall above her head.

Stiffly, Pip sat up. Her arm throbbed where it had been pinned by the handrail. I’ll probably have a gross bruise in no time.

Her head hurt too, and she felt dizzy when she tried to move. She rubbed her eyes. Gradually, the dizziness faded. I suppose someone will come looking for me soon. I wonder how long I’ve been on ground level.

Just then she heard a faint sound on the tram’s outer hull, like scratching. Pip’s first thought was that rescue workers had climbed down to find her. But then she heard the scratching again, closer. It had moved to the top of the overturned tram without any accompanying footsteps. Workers in any job on the undertier struts wore heavy, clompy boots like Pip’s, that made an awful lot of noise on any surface. Whoever, whatever, was scratching at the hull wasn’t making any noise at all as they scaled the twisted metal.

Pip gasped, clapping both hands tight over her mouth, just in case a scream decided to jump out. She huddled back between the bottom of her bench and the tram floor boards, as far into the shadows as she could. Suddenly, a shadow loomed up, blocking the dusty sunbeams from above. A dark figure dropped down into the tram without a sound, and crouched, peering around the passenger compartment. For all the world, Pip thought he was a man, but dressed in ragged robes of some dusty, dark material. He didn’t act much like a man, though. His wiry grey arms and legs were bare, and shifted smoothly from one position to another as he crawled on all fours around the room, slinking around sideways benches. He actually crawled on three’s while his left hand clasped a long, thick spear. A dark hood shielded his face from her view. But she heard him snuffling, like a dog smelling the air.

The man-thing crawled toward her. Pip sat still as a statue as he passed her by. A waft of stink came by with him. What a smell! And then, as all bodies do when we least want them to, hers decided to sneeze.

The dark figure whirled around toward her, eyes shining out of the shadows of his hood. Pip darted out of her hiding place and scrambled down the tram for the emergency hatch at the rear. But the man-thing was faster. He hopped up onto the armrests of the sideways benches, into the open space that was once the center aisle, and swung down into her path. He crouched, pointing his strange spear at her. As alarmed as Pip was, she couldn’t help but notice the point end of the man-thing’s spear was made of a sharply folded street sign. T16 Linco—Aven— were the parts that showed on the flats of the delicately crimped and sharpened spearhead.

“Please, I’m just Pip. I fell from Tier 32. I mean inside the tram. I fell with the tram. Where is everybody else?” The words tumbled out of Pip’s mouth. But the man-thing didn’t move or respond. He simply stared into her frightened eyes. Pip whimpered. “Please don’t eat me.”

The man-thing twitched with an awkward chuckle, almost like a hyena laugh, but deep and low. His glowing eyes blinked out and then opened again. “Why would I eat you? I am not one of them. Besides, even if I were, you are too thin and boney to be of much interest.”

Pip gasped. “I’m a whole 18 years old! Well, 17 and 3/4 anyway.”

The man-thing chuckled his low hyena chuckle. “Like I said, too thin and boney.”

Pip blushed, unable to make up a good comeback. “Who are you and where is everyone else?”

The man-thing lowered his spear. “I am Mago. I come from the DetZo Tribe. Just Pip, who are these others you speak of?”

“The other people on the tram. There were at least 40 people who all fell with me.”

Pip heard Mago sigh inside his dark hood. “You are the only person in this—um, tram structure,” he said.

Pip’s knees knocked together. Her backpack, still slung against her chest, suddenly seemed like it was full of cement. She slumped to the floor, feeling sick. “That means they’re all dead! They got thrown out of the car on the way down, and they’re dead!” she gasped. “How long have I been down here? Nobody came for me because they thought I was dead, too! I’ll never get home!”

“I am sorry for your loss.” Mago bowed his head, pushing back his hood.

He wasn’t so shadowy and grey-skinned as Pip had thought. Dark jags of camouflage paint ran down his chiseled face, curving around a goatee of too-young whiskers. He ran a hand through the dirty hair on top of his head, which immediately sprung back up straight. The sides of his head were shaved to the skin, and covered in more paint. Most of his body that showed under his ragged clothing was actually painted the same dark color as his face. He had been so stealthy getting into the tram in part because he was barefoot. But, even though he was more human than Pip had anticipated, his eyes still held their yellow glint, and he still behaved in a slightly less than human way.

“Thanks,” Pip snuffled, wiping her eyes with her dirty sleeve. “What do I do now? I mean, I suppose I should try to climb back to Tier 1 and get help.”

“No.” Mago shook his head. “You are afraid and weak. We will go to my tribe. It is not safe here.”

Pip suddenly felt brave, mostly because she was angry that he had noticed that she was so scared, and that this strange man-thing was ordering her around. She sprang to her feet. “No, we won’t. I am going home. You can’t stop me.”

“Keep quiet, girl! It is not safe.”

“No, I won’t!” Pip’s voice rose a little with every new statement. “I’m not a girl. I’m a grown woman. This is my city. I’m not going to be ordered by man-thing hoodlums who tear down street signs to make oversized hotdog stickers!” The last few words came out in a shrill scream, which echoed through the tram, and out to bounce between girders and struts around it.

The echoes faded as Pip realized how not threatening and truly girlish her outburst had actually sounded. Then, out of whatever environment lay outside the tram came a shriek, wild and quickly falling into a deep, guttural roar.

Pip only stared at the roof-side of the tram in the direction of the shriek, her eyes popping wide. Mago stared too. But his expression hardened into a deep ferocity.

“Come, girl! We must go. Now! They are coming!”

Pip couldn’t say anything. She simply nodded and let him grab her hand. Mago pulled Pip toward the emergency exit. Heaving the door latch up, he threw the hatch open. They scrambled out into long, stringy grass, spotted with gravel and boulders. Mago broke into an all-out sprint, pulling Pip along behind him as another shriek sounded. Pip looked back to see the tram rising up against the backdrop of a tall, tangled forest. Suddenly, a huge creature burst out through the tree trunks. Huge razor-like teeth flashed from a gaping mouth. Long claws slashed the ground as the creature galloped toward them. The huge black body ripped through the remains of the tram, splintering the wood and sheet metal. Pip ducked as shards flew around her and Mago. The creature leaped for them.

Mago ducked to the left, swinging Pip ten feet up and through a hole in a huge steel girder that stuck out of the ground like a rusty tower. He crawled up the girder in a flash, jumping out of reach of the creature’s sweeping claws. Pip finally was able to scream. She wriggled back into the rust-heaped cavern. The creature bent low, peering into the hole with a hung reptile eye. Then it moved its head upward, pressing its mouth against the hole. It snorted into the hole, and then sucked up a huge mawful of air, getting Pip’s scent. The black scales of its lipless mouth showed, ending at the tree trunk-sized roots of its teeth. Rusty dust swirled around Pip, flying out into the cavernous mouth as the creature inhaled again. She felt her clothes and backpack pull against her body in the same horrifying direction. But the vortex the creature made just got stronger. She scrabbled at the decaying metal floor, looking for a place to grab ahold. But there was nothing. Out the hole she was dragged. Finally, her fingers found a grip at the lip of the cave, and she held on tight. Her legs swung down between two of the monster’s huge teeth and into the girder’s face as the creature’s mouth closed.

The creature backed away, turning its head to stare at her with a bulbous eye. Then, it licked its chops. Its forked black tongue snaked toward Pip, wrapping around her waist, lifting her up. She couldn’t hold onto the girder. The creature tipped its head back and flipped her into the air above its wide-open jaws. For a moment, Pip was weightless, floating above the razor-edged gullet. Next instant, she felt Mago’s arms around her, and the force of his body crashing into hers as he snatched her away midair. He carried her another thirty feet through the air, deftly grabbing the broken edge of the next girder over and swinging around the far side.

The creature shrieked angrily. It hurled itself into the girder they hid behind, ready to take the whole structure down in revenge. Mago slung Pip over his shoulder. He hefted his spear in his other hand, and threw it. The sign post blade slid into the huge pupil of the creature’s left eye. The monster howled in pain, clawing at its face. It smashed into the girders. The structure above groaned and shifted. Mago jumped again, away from the girders and into a nearby tree. Pip covered her head with her hands as they crashed through twigs and leaves. She looked up in time to see the structure roar down on the creature in a cloud of dust and smoke.

Mago carried Pip from tree to tree for another few minutes, until they had escaped the debris cloud. Then he found a tree with a trunk the size of a house. Here, he finally set her down in the highest divide, where the trunk splayed into thousands of smaller branches. They sat down on the rough bark.

Pip leaned against the bough behind her, pushing leaves out of her face as they sprung back around her. Suddenly she was aware of how hot it was outside the city’s shadow. She wiped a few stray beads of sweat from her forehead. “What was that thing?” she panted.

“It is a Kreeg. We do not know where they came from. But they have haunted us for many centuries. We believe they have a sort of common knowledge among them. The others will know that you are present here, now that this one has seen you and taken your scent. They will be able to follow us easily, if we once again meet one.”

“What?” Pip’s mind couldn’t quite get past the idea that something was wrong with what Mago said. But it took her a moment to put her finger on it. “But there aren’t any Kreegs under Detroit. How could they have been here for centuries and we don’t know about them? How could you be here—and stealing street signs—and no one noticed?”

“Who do you speak of?” Mago’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“All the people who live in Detroit. All the people up there.” She pointed through the leaves to the towering shapes of the city’s tiers rising up into the clouds.

Mago shook his head. “No one lives there. The Kreeg began at the topmost level and have controlled all the upper levels for a thousand summers. They destroyed or chased away all who tried to hold the lower levels shortly after their first campaign.”

“But—But—” Pip stammered. “How is that possible? I lived in a Detroit full of millions of people. I fell from Tier 32 this morning!”

“I do not know how that is possible. But I am certain that this Detroit you speak of was one that has not been for many lives of men.”

Pip took a deep breath. She realized that neither she nor Mago had the answers she desperately needed. “What should we do now?”

“We must go to my tribe. We will be safer there than in the wilds of the city.”

“Where’s that? Your tribe, I mean.”

“The DetZo tribe has lived for many centuries in villages on the upland nouthwest of the city where the inhabitants of the 16^th level founded a colony called the New Det-roi-it Zoh.”

“You mean, the Detroit Zoo?”

“I believe so.” Mago looking away shyly. “Um. What is a zoo?” He screwed up his lips uncertainly, struggling to say the word the way Pip had.

“Oh.” Pip had never realized how difficult it would be to describe something so common that she took so for granted in her life. She thought a moment. “Well, I guess it’s a place where humans keep animals they like to look at but are usually too dangerous to play with. The Zoo reached from the top tier all the way to the bottom one. The top tiers of the city had the best, most exotic and expensive animals. But I never got to go there. On my tier, we had mostly animals that were saved from going extinct around the time I was born. Mostly, they were kind of boring—squirrels, gorillas, pigeons, seals. Stuff they called “wild animals,” but didn’t seem wild to me. But I did like the monkeys.”

Mago nodded slowly. “We have no such places. We only house creatures that are useful to us for food or work.”

“Oh! Like cows?”

“I am not familiar with that creature. But you will see when we reach my village.” Mago looked up at the sky. The sun sat high in the blue vault. Shreds of cloud reached out from a larger cloud bank that stood dark against the western horizon. “We must go now, or we will not reach my village before the storm comes.”

“What’s so bad about a little rain? It rains all the time in Detroit and never hurts anything.”

Mago’s face firmed into a frown. “Yes, but along with the rain comes darkness. And the Kreeg come with the darkness. We will only be safe if we reach the villages before the Kreeg reach us.”

Pip looked over the edge of the tree branch they sat on. “How are we going to get there? I don’t know how we’ll even get out of this tree. I’m not getting thrown over your shoulder again.”

“Can you climb, Just Pip?”

“Oh. Of course. But I was always climbing on the undertiers, not climbing trees. We didn’t even have trees on Tier 32.”

“Then you will learn something new. Or you will be eaten by Kreeg in the rain.” Mago shrugged.

“Well, when you put it that way. Lead on.”