“Did you hear that?”
“I think we all heard that. Stay close. It could have been anything.”
They had expected the desert to be an empty wasteland, despite the tales and horror stories they had grown up with, of ghouls and spirits driven mad by the fate of walking these empty dunes for eternity, not to mention the enormous monsters that supposedly slept beneath the sands, listening for any vibration that would signal a quick and easy meal. In a way, the idea that they were alone out here in the vast expanse of nothingness was worse, and many of them had slept fitfully with nightmares of the empty dunes. As soon as that noise had reached their ears though, each and every one of the youths tracking (now very cautiously and with a closed line) through the desert had the sinking feeling that perhaps dying from thirst and hunger was not the worst thing that could happen to them out here.
Chapter Seven
As the sun dipped lower towards the horizon, Sirius began to get anxious.
“It should be here. It should be in sight by now. Ziggy, go to the top of that dune and check it out.”
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me in the past half hour, Sirius. I didn’t see anything.”
Sirius looked around him, a painful twang in his chest at the dejected faces of the people around him. They were losing faith. That much was obvious. And if he was honest with himself, so was he.
“We should think about setting down soon.”
“Why? There’s still at least two hours of daylight left. We can keep going.”
“Sirius… look around you.” Tyna leaned in and whispered. He did not.
“Look, I know we’re all tired, and we’re all hurting. But this is all for nothing if we don’t find this place. It’s here. I know it is. I can feel it.”
“Oh you can feel it, can you?” Kaz snapped. Zak had taken a turn for the worse. A slice across the belly that they had sustained while fighting the city guard had started to stink, and their eyes were rolling back into their head every so often, swaying so that Kaz had to slip an arm around their waist and right them again. Despite using the salt from the flats and clean bandages, Celeste was only able to do so much for them; without medicine, proper medicine, everyone knew that they would likely die. “Well, no prizes for guessing how I’m feeling right now.”
“Feelings don’t matter. Faith matters. We should keep moving,” Celeste intoned. Usually when the acolyte spoke, the rest of them listened, but Kaz stopped in the middle of the company,
holding their twin upright.
“I’m about to lose the only family I’ve got left and you want to talk to me about the damn spirits?!” they barked. Zak ineffectually pawed at their chest, mumbling something that sounded like ‘stop” and “I’m okay”. Kaz ignored them. “You three especially. Dragging us into this when you don’t even know what you’re dealing with! Giving us false hope that we could ever have anything outside of those walls! Didn’t you learn anything in school?! That was all that was left!”
“Oh yeah, of course, because subjugating the entirety of your people would go so badly if you convinced them that you and your system were all that was standing between them, uncivilization and death. You’re so… dumb sometimes…” Zak finally piped up, croaking voice layered with pain. Kaz blinked at them. “Really Kaz, use your brain. If there really is nothing out here, I’m ready for the sun to take me. I don’t care. It’s better than back there.”
“Don’t say that.” Kaz ignored the others completely now, their eyes fixed to their sibling and filling with tears. “We’re gonna get out of this, I promise. You and me, remember?”
“Gee, you change your tone quick.” Zak gave a weak smirk. “Is it alright if we stop, just for a moment? I’m feeling kinda dizzy.”
“Of course.”
“Sure.”
Tyna and Sirius, humbled by Zak’s defense of them even in the state they were in, allowed the group to sit, take some water and food. The sun sank behind an enormous dune that seemed to dominate most of the skyline now that they were so close to it. They huddled in the precious shade that was cast, many nursing pounding headaches as they quenched their thirst.
Another cackle split the air just as they were readying to move on. It was closer this time, close enough that one could easily pinpoint that it was coming from behind them, following the long path of footprints that the twelve of them had stamped out into the sand.
“What the hell is that?!”
“I don’t know. Let’s just keep moving. Up the dune. Go, now!” Tyna’s eyes were wide and anxious as she hurried them along. They began to climb the dune, the sound of heavy, strenuous breaths filling the air. Everyone had their eyes glued to the peak, but when a scream rung out from the back of the company, they turned to see something truly horrifying.
Dogs- but not like the ones that roamed the streets of Ulead, crabby scraggly mutts that nine times out of ten would flee if you clapped your hands. These animals were at least twice as big, and there were five of them, hulking brutish creatures with patches of fur missing from their haunches, tumors. and growths the size of a child’s fist hanging off them. Their eyes appeared red in the half-light of the evening as they watched, slowly padding closer up the dune- wary, but hungry. Sirius looked at the way each of their ribs protruded through the mottled, scabbed skin. Very hungry.
“Dogs. Damn dogs. I go out to the desert to die, and there’s still damn DOGS everywhere,” Ziggy muttered to himself. Because of the distance the creatures were keeping, the group remained confident, as scared as they were. But once the last one in the line, Frankie, had taken her eyes off the pack for a moment, one of the animals lunged upwards over the sand and snapped at her heels just inches away. Another scream. The group began to climb faster, simply spurring the dogs on to move quicker. Some started lolloping up the side of the dunes alongside theirs, cackling again, taunting them.
“Sirius! You have to come and see this!” Tyna called down once she had reached the peak. Sirius, who had taken the back of the group and thrown a fistful of sand into the face of the bravest dog, scrambled up past the others to see what she could possibly want at a time like this.
When the sun hit his face again as it was half-sinking behind the mountains, smothering him in its light and warmth, at first he could see nothing. When he shielded his green eyes and peered down into the small valley that had been formed by the shifting sands, he saw it.
“THE TOWN!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “It’s here! It’s here! We’ve found it!”
The rest of the youths clambered their way to the top. Some had to sit or take a knee, gasping with the exertion, but once they saw what he saw they began whooping. The warmth of victory surged in Sirius’ chest, but not before it was struck cold by the sound of the dogs, closer than ever before. One of them leaped suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, at them over the peak of the dune. It instantly clashed with Tyna’s spear and lost, falling to the ground in three twitching pieces.
“RUN!”
They fled down the side of the dune, several of them losing their footing and tumbling head-over-foot. Sirius reached down and hauled them to their feet as he passed them, shoving them in the back and barking at them to go on. He looked back. The dogs stood at the peak of the dune, feasting on their dead pack mate. How long would it take before they turned their hungry eyes on them once more?
Once at the bottom of the dune, they could catch their breath, but Sirius was having none of it. He marched towards the silhouette of the town as the sun finally disappeared.
He put his hands to his mouth and called out the moment he was in approximate earshot.
“HELLO!?” he hollered, his voice echoing off the dozen or so derelict buildings still clinging on against the elements. As they kept walking the sand soon gave up to gravel and ancient, cracked concrete. “HE-LLO?!”
“Shouldn’t there be lights on by now? It’s getting dark…” Kaz murmured to Tyna as they cautiously followed him, now supporting Zak com
pletely as the injured youth slumped against them, semi-conscious after the exertion of escaping the dogs. Tyna said nothing, simply keeping her spear ready, eyes glued to Sirius.
“Hello?” his voice soon petered out to a quiet, dejected call. “Hello?!”
“Sirius… look around.” Most of the town was long buried under sand, and what was left literally crumbled and gave up chunks of stone, brick and concrete as they watched. Rusted vehicles from long ago lay around the place minus their tires, internals, or indeed anything that could be of use. A well sat in the middle of the echoing space that seemed to have been built after the disasters that had made the new world, but aside from that there was no sign that anyone had lived here since the Great Crisis. “Nobody’s here. It’s empty.”
“But it can’t be! Look!” Sirius pointed to the well, beginning to jog towards it. Tyna called after him, warning him about running off and sticking together, but his head was so full of pounding thoughts and his chest ached ten times more than his legs ever could that he could do nothing other than pelt towards this one beacon of hope as fast as he could. “Get a lantern! Come on!”
With a grunt he pushed the piece of corrugated iron covering the well from the wide, brick-laid hole. Tyna caught up eventually and halfheartedly handed over the lantern. “If this has water, we’re saved. Saved, Tyna!”
He looked down into the abyss. The lantern slowly glowed to life and lit up the area, all the way down to the bottom. Sirius recoiled, almost letting it drop with a smash down the deep hole. “Oh spirits. Oh no. oh no no no, please no…”
Tyna snatched the lantern and took a look herself, instantly freezing up, shoulders tensing until they sat around her ears.
The well was filled with bones. Human bones, of every size, ranging from the skull of an adult man to what looked like the delicate rib-cage of a baby floating next to it. Having had no chance to be bleached by the sun, they were a dirty, dark color. There was indeed water lingering somewhere down there, around the bones and submerging spirits knew how many more, but when they had still been bodies they had released their rotting flesh into the water source. It stank now, stank of death and dust, and was thick, greasy, oily. Tyna saw the sheen sitting on top of the surface and despaired. She stepped back from the well, but not before putting the iron cover back over the opening.
“What is it? I sense something… horrible,” Celeste murmured. Sirius could say nothing, practically catatonic as he slumped up against the ring of stone and put his head in his hands. Tyna swallowed.
“They killed everyone here. All of them, even children. And then they put them down the well so that the water would be spoiled and anyone that tried to come here again couldn’t use it. They killed them. They’ve killed us.”
“So we go back to the city. Go into the tunnels. Go into the Sickening. Anything. We can’t just die here! This isn’t… this isn’t fair!” Selene wailed.
“It’s a two day hike. We’re already nearly out of food and water. Nobody here will make it, not after everything else.”
Someone started crying. The rest simply stood around in shock. Sirius held his knees tighter as the sun finally disappeared from the sky, leaving behind a spattering of stars beginning to fade into the scene and a bitter cold that instantly cooled the sweat on their brows and chilled them to the bone. In the distance, they could hear those beastly dogs baying and snarling, their voices raised to announce that they were done with the putrid remains of their comrade, and were looking for fresher, softer meat.
“We have to get a fire lit. We have to get somewhere safe. One of the buildings must have somewhere we can be.” Tyna, taking the lead even when things seemed so very bleak, began to herd everyone towards the nearest building. “Come on. Sirius. Sirius. SIRIUS!”
The boy ignored her. He remained sat where he was, staring at the ground through his fingers. The chilling sounds of the dogs came closer. They had realized, too late, that the animals ran this town now.
The animals.
Sirius narrowed his eyes, the shock and trauma causing his vision to waver. The sound of paws pounding sandy concrete got louder and louder. Tyna, standing in the doorway of the nearest building, called out to him again, the rest of the group peering anxiously over her shoulder. “SIRIUS! COME ON!”
Too little too late. A snarl of victory ripped through the air as the biggest dog put in a last burst of speed, bearing down on the hapless youth. Sirius stared it straight in the face, green eyes boring into the red orbs that came at him through the half-light.
Come on then. Finish it.
Before the dog could leap forward and sink its teeth into Sirius’ exposed neck, it fell back with a scream of pain as Tyna’s spear slashed across its side. It fell back, growling and salivating, eyes burning with the fury of a lost meal. “Come ON!”
She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet, dragging him towards the building. The other dogs circled it, cowed by the display of violence and less eager than before, but were easily shut out when the ancient door was slammed shut. It felt less like the obtainment of safety Sirius vaguely thought, and more as though the slamming door was sealing them all inside their tomb.
The lantern flickered to life. What they were met with was a strange sight. Ancient spiderwebs covered the area, which was decked in worm-riddled wooden benches covered in rusty tools. A very large, ominous shape dominated the center of the space, covered with a tarpaulin. They milled about for a moment, seemingly lost for words, the musty stink in the room making them cough every so often. The whole place reminded Sirius eerily of the chop shop back in Ulead, but fast forward a hundred years with nobody to tend to the various parts of broken machinery laying about the place.
“Well, I guess this is it, then.”
“No, this isn’t it. We just have to think, is all,” Tyna shot back at Ziggy, giving him a look, but feeling bad about it straight away; his face, much like the rest of them, was pulled down in an expression of absolute defeat. “Look around. See if you can find anything to burn. We need to get warm, quickly.”
They smashed up an old workbench and chairs and got to lighting it, smashing a high window in order to allow the thick smoke that plumed up from the little fire to escape. The sound of the dogs growling outside reached their ears and did little to aid their failed morale, but for now the beasts couldn’t get to them. They amused themselves scratching at the underside of the door instead. Selene sobbed and covered her ears with her hands, Frankie doing her best to calm her. Sirius kicked out at a sealed metal canister in anger, making everyone jump.
He paused when it made a sloshing sound. He bent down next to the canister, unscrewing the lid with a grunt.
“What is it?” Celeste asked, her tone as calm and quiet as ever. Sirius said nothing, waving a hand over the opening of the canister and smelling deeply.
“Oh.” The exclamation had everyone looking up. “Oh. OH.”
He began running around the workshop, upending boxes of rusted tools and inspecting them one by one. Tyna watched him with a furrowed brow.
“What in the spirits” name are you doing?”
“Shhh,” he hissed, putting a finger to his lips. “Let me concentrate. My head is buzzing.”
“Well, I’m sure it is, after smelling that! This place hasn’t been touched for hundreds of years, Sirius. Whatever’s in there is probably toxic.”
“Not hundreds of years. A hundred. And you’re not wrong, but…” he shook the can. “This right here? This is the same fuel we use back in Ulead. It has a shelf life of at least a hundred and fifty years. Someone came up with the formula after the Crisis and it’s been used by us ever since. Some poor bastard that’s now probably down that well must have brought it here.”
“What use is fuel if we haven’t got anything to put it in? You saw what state the vehicles were in out there.”
“What about in here?” Sirius shot back with a grin, the first to grace his face for days. “Someone help me pull this off,” he
said, tugging the corner of the tarp. Ziggy and Frankie obeyed, and with some snagging and catching, what lay beneath it was revealed with a final flourish.
“Oh, very nice.”
Sirius had only seen one of its kind, in pieces as salvage when it was brought into the chop shop. It had gone as parts to various other vehicles, as standards in the city demanded that nothing of that size be produced except by request of the Skyborn- who had done no such thing. To see one whole and together took his breath away. An enormous armored truck, complete with an additional mean-looking cage mounted on the bonnet, gleamed in the light of the fire. It was perfect aside from a little rust and dust. Sirius could barely believe it. He whooped. “We’re saved, guys, we’re saved!”
“I don’t get it. You don’t know if it even runs. And even if it does, where the hell are we going in it? We can’t go back.”
“Oh, but we can. Better than that. We can fight.” There was a new light in Sirius’ eyes, a fierce, almost savage glint that made Tyna blink and step back slightly. Sirius checked himself and took a deep breath to calm down. “Whoever brought this here hid it because they knew that Ulead might come after them. It wouldn’t surprise me if they stole it to escape in the first place.”
Ziggy opened the door on the driver’s side.
“There’s keys in the ignition!” he called out. “And… oh. OH!” he exclaimed, almost exactly as Sirius had done before. He wriggled out of the truck and stepped down, holding something in one hand.
It was a rifle.
“Spirits alive, that’s a firearm!” Tyna declared, instantly calling the attention of the room to the weapon in the skinny boy’s hands. They crowded around it, wide-eyed and staring. Many of them had never even seen a gun up close in their lives. Only the elite Skyborn guard were permitted to carry firearms, and most of their time was spent patrolling the balconies of the skyscrapers, spitting on the heads of unwary passers-by. “Is there ammunition?”
Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction: The Missing Ones: A Dystopian Adventure Page 9