BANG! BANG! BANG!
The gunshots continued to ring out through Atlantic City's broken streets, each report echoing off empty buildings and creating overlapping sound waves that transformed the urban landscape into an acoustic nightmare.
We had reached what appeared to be the city's center—or at least deeper into the urban core than the residential outskirts where we'd first encountered Rico's group. Though darkness made precise navigation difficult and the apocalypse had transformed recognizable landmarks into twisted ruins, I could identify distinct architectural shifts that indicated we'd penetrated into more developed areas.
Houses gave way to larger multi-story buildings. We passed what had clearly once been a school—a sprawling institutional structure with broken windows and a playground where rusted swings moved with ghostly motion in the ocean breeze.
