Heding to APOC

by Morgan Destera

  Vin touched her elbow and she looked at him. He was weak, weaker than she was, but very much alive. He stood, breathing heavily and clutching his ribs, just staring at her. She wanted to hug him tight in relief, but knew this was not the time. She looked around and saw the Vin had already disposed of the two underlings.

  She slid off the table and wobbled unsteadily. Five days without food as well as a medical procedure did not bode well for either of them. They could very well collapse before they got out of the building.

  After a moment, Vin walked shakily over to the to assistants and relieved them of their sidearms. He also took the extra magazines of ammunition they both carried. He then went to a cupboard on the wall, opened a few doors and came out with a set of work pants and scrub shirts. Gratefully she took the clothing and dressed. They were too big, but it was better than no clothing at all. She had been naked too much through this whole adventure. Once dressed, he handed her one weapon. She didn't look at it, just slid it into the deep pockets of the work pants.

  She went over to the door, and found it unlocked. The nurse assistant had kept it unlocked during the prep period of the procedure so equipment could be brought in and out easily. Just as the cell door had been left open while she had been carried and prepped for the implantation. Vin had been written off as a casualty. No one – not even Siki – had expected him to be gaining strength and healing with no food. The Regulators wanted the prisoners weak, so they had not fed them. Vin, however, had needed rest more than food, to heal his injuries. But now that he was exerting himself, food was becoming a much-needed commodity.

  “I know this building,” he said weakly. “At least it should be the command center closest to the Shafts. One-story, so if nothing else we can go through a window.”

  Siki glanced around the room. The only windows were tall and very narrow, too narrow to slip through. Vin read her mind. “But we probably won't need to,” he added. “There should be an exit door at the end of the hall. The problem is, its probably alarmed. So we hit it and run like crazy. Don't worry about me, just keep going. I will meet back up with you. Just try to get to the warehouse, but don't go in. They wouldn't expect us to go back to the Shafts.”

  Siki shook her head in wonder. “I wouldn't either,” she said. “Is that our intent? Hide in plain sight?”

  Vin stared blankly for a moment and Siki wondered if he was in pain.

  “No,” he finally said. “The warehouse is just a cover. We're heading to Apoc.”

  Part Two: The Wastes

  CHAPTER 5

  That's exactly what we did. We hit the door running, so to speak. Neither one of us had much strength to really run. It was more like hit the door limping. But the door alarm had been disabled, either by man or by mechanical failure, so we were extremely lucky. We never looked back, just headed for the big old warehouse that used to be my home. It really was a grotesque old building with broken windows and missing sections of wall. But being outside seemed a step up in comparison at that point. It had been since I was a tiny girl that I had stepped foot on grass. But this wasn't grass. It was waste; pure, solid waste.

  Siki and Vin spent the night huddled together at the base of the warehouse, deep in the shadows. Neither of them slept well, knowing that they were being hunted by the Regulators.

  “Or maybe not, Vin mused. “Maybe they just wrote us off and leave us to the Wastes. Its not like either one of us could ever be integrated back into society,” he spat the final word.

  Siki did not believe they would be left alone. At the very least Maharg would want to know if the implantation was successful. And if she was pregnant, he would surely want the child to be indoctrinated.

  She lay awake as the sun started to rise. She closed her eyes, feeling its warmth. Was it only a week or so ago that she had lain in her sunbeam alone? She felt Vin stir next to her. “It's your sunbeam,” he said huskily, staring at her.

  She rolled onto her side. “Tell me about Apoc,” she said. “I've heard of it, but don't know what it is exactly. Or where.”

  “Apoc is Ground Zero,” he said simply. “The Ohio-Michigan area where the Meltdowns began. The two plants were pretty near each other on Lake Erie and when one blew, the other got so overloaded, it went up before long also. That started the whole chain reaction. Those Nuke guys who took over from the EPA – the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – The Regs, they tell us that its uninhabitable, that the lake is contaminated and overrun with radiated monster fish and algae. The ground is too 'hot' to plant or plow – only the top inch or two of soil is clean. You dig deeper and all that radiation will just get stirred up again. But I wonder....

  “...I've heard from some Wasters that its not as bad as they say. The ground is hot, yes, but its safe to build on, as long as you build high. Stick posts in the ground and build on a platform. They used to do it in the swamps. You can't really farm, but you can grow enough for yourself and a small family, if need be. A lot of bartering going on, but that's the way it is in the Wastes too. And they said the contaminated area isn't as large as the Regs say it is. Fifteen or twenty miles from Fermi and you're pretty safe. They didn't need to clear out a hundred miles all around the place.”

  “Why do you want to go there? It seems like a death sentence.”

  “Don't think of it like that. It's really no worse than the Wastes. And maybe cleaner. All this filth,” He dug a heel in the ground, scraping up muck just below the surface. “It's all just shit and piss anyways. Its just as bad here for contamination. Just a different kind. Besides, mostly everyone's afraid to go to Apoc. We'd be by ourselves, not clustered in a warehouse freezing. Yea, I guess we could freeze out there as well, especially in winter, but it would be our own. I've heard the Nuclear Winter and spring tornadoes have cleaned the land up there quite a bit. And at least we'd be free...” His voice trailed off.

  Free? What was that, Siki mused. Many years ago, as a child, she had felt free. But now she knew of the constant indoctrination she and her mother had gone through. As one of the few pregnant women to survive the Meltdowns and still have a viable fetus, her mother had been given special treatment, including real housing. But it had all come with conditions. If the child – Siki – was born healthy, she would be raised with special instructions. There was no art or paintings in her house growing up, just propaganda posters. The books she had all had common themes – obey, do your duty, if you can't work then breed. It all seemed normal then, but she was learning that perhaps there can be some pleasure in life. After she was born, her mother had been made into a Breeder. Now Siki wondered briefly if she had brothers or sisters out there.

  Right now she was taking much pleasure in just watching him talk so wistfully about freedom. The way the corner of his clear brown eyes crinkled when he smiled. He had a great smile. She could see that he truly believed in what he was saying. He thought that Apoc was not ground zero of the apocalypse as they knew it, but maybe the start of a utopia.

  He stood up. “We should get going soon. Before the sky fills. You have that face-mask still?” He said, referring to the surgical scrub mask that had been part of the outfits he had stolen from the lab. She nodded. “Good. It's not the best protection, but its better than nothing. Once it starts to heat up, the smell will be as bad or worse than the chemicals.”

  They left their tiny campsite before the sun was totally up. By the time they reached the edge of town, the sky was already filling with contaminates. Vin went into town, where he was known, sure that the news of his “criminal activities” had not been announced to the public yet. And even if his face was on wanted posters, not many people would even be out and about once the contamination filled the sky. He was able to trade half a clip of bullets for some food, water, and blankets.

  And then they walked. They bundled their few belongings onto their backs and headed northeast. They tried to keep to the shadows as much as possible, but the further they got away from town, the less cover there was. And without cover, the contamin
ation was even worse. There was little or no wind to push it along. It just hung in the air, thickly, yellow, sickeningly.

  There were areas too, they had to watch for the filth beneath them. Once Siki almost fell completely through the thinned crust. She did lose a boot, but did not complain. She just followed Vin, trusting he knew the way.

  CHAPTER 6

  As they traveled, they found scraps and pieces they could use for trading – an unbroken mirror, some books, cans of food they could use or trade, some hand tools. Small items, easy to carry, but items that could be considered as luxuries in places where there is very little entertainment. They came across pieces of jewelry, but left them. Gold was too soft to use for tools, and though diamonds were tough, they were hard to fashion into something useful. The days of owning prosperity were gone. People who had hoarded gold in the past now found themselves stuck with a large stockpiles and very little to trade.

  There were more little towns and gatherings in the Wastes than she had ever expected. None were thriving, but there was life, which was encouraging to Siki. There were few or no children, she noted. However, there seemed to be morals in these small areas, if no written laws. But out on the Wastes themselves, it was each person for themselves. It wasn't a large concern, though, since there were very few people wandering.

  After another six days of travel, they received the first warning that they were indeed being hunted. A woman in one small gathering casually mentioned she had been asked by a single wanderer on horseback who had stopped and traded some bottled water for information and a warning.

  “He asked about a man and a woman. Said the woman may be pregnant. I laughed and said I haven't seen a pregnant woman in years. Especially out here. If it ain't the woman's fault, a lot of guys out here just can't get it up anymore,” she said. “The guy was too clean and well-dressed to be a wanderer though.”

  Siki's hands immediately went to caress her stomach. On the first day out, she had passed a bloody lump that had probably been one of the eggs Maharg had implanted. She had felt relieved and had waited eagerly for the second to pass, but it never did. She tried not to think about the implications.

  Vin remained impassive at the news. “I think they are just covering their asses if they only sent one rider out at a time. If they were serious, they would at least be in teams, if not more.”

  They continued on, a little more vigilant. It would be easy to spot a lone rider since horses were rare in the Wastes due to contaminated water and food after the Meltdowns. The only horses left were those that were owned by the government, or had been kept safe by farmers. They were too expensive to keep for most Wasters, and the weight of the animals often broke through the surface into the muck.

  That's why when they saw a group of several riders coming towards them a few days later, they panicked. But on the Wastes there was nowhere to hide. The riders came on a well-worn path that Vin had thought may have been a paved road at one time. He yelled for Siki to hide in the ditch by the road, but he knew that the riders had already spotted her. She refused to go and stayed by Vin's side as the riders surrounded them.

  Immediately they could see these were not Regs. The clothing the riders wore were full flowing robes, made from a camouflage pattern of tans and browns which blended well with the Wastes, as well as goggles and thick filtration masks fashioned from skins – skins of what Siki didn't want to know. The Riders were skilled and were only seen when they wanted to be seen, which left Vin confident the group was not going to attack them unless provoked.

  Without a word, a rider extended a hand to Vin while another did the same to Siki. They looked at each other, carefully reading each other's reaction, before accepting the proffered hand and being pulled up onto horses behind the riders.

  They rode for several hours. Siki nodded off and almost fell but her rider kept her upright. She looked for Vin but the horse he was on was at the front of the group and she could barely make out his form in the haze.

  They halted before a series of huts made from dried mud and waste and dismounted. Other people, dressed similarly to the Riders, came and took the horses to be cared for. The Riders walked towards a larger building, but did not force Vin and Siki along. Unsure of what else to do, they followed.

  No one prevented them from entering, so they continued to follow the group. At one point, the group stopped and took of their robes in a ceremonious fashion before bowing towards a man in a yellowish robe who stood at the front of the room. The Riders stood, then each dipped a hand into a fancy ceramic bowl and sprinkled the liquid over their bodies. Siki wrinkled her nose at the scent. The scent reminded her of an incident she and Vin had had a few days before.

  They had been sleeping near an outcropping of rocks that had gone deep into the muck and sewage that was the ground. She had awakened suddenly by a sharp pain on the flat of hr foot. She had been able to feel the swelling long before her lantern could illuminate the area. Her left foot had swollen at least twice the size of the right. The pain had been indescribable.

  Vin had been awakened by her cries and had seen the redness and swelling. He had taken her foot gingerly in his hands and had examined it to find three fang marks in the flesh. Blood and pus had been already oozing from the wound. Siki had been openly crying now, trying to stand but unable to do so on her injured foot.

  “Don't move!” Vin had said harshly. “You'll get the venom more in your bloodstream. Just try to stay still!”

  She had tried to remain passive but the stinging pain was horrendous. “I've never felt anything like this!”

  Vin had been unsure what to do. He had known what he had needed to do – remove the stingers and kill the pain. Unfortunately what few healing tools they'd had with them were extremely basic.

  “I gotta get those stingers out,” he had whispered. “Its gonna hurt worse, but they'll just continue to pump venom into you unless I get them out. If I don't get them out, you could die and at the very least you'd lose your foot.”

  He had taken her foot and with his knife he had cut a straight line into her flesh between each stinger hole, so they had been all connected. He then had brought the foot up to his mouth and he had sucked hard on that area. It had been harder than he had imagined it to be. From propaganda first aid films he had watched as a kid, it had seemed so easy. But those incidents had also been with rattlesnakes and consisted only of draining venom, not mutated Squibbon that injected venom-pumping stingers or fangs deep in the flesh. Here the stingers themselves needed removed also.

  Siki had cried louder, had tried to wrench her foot away, but he had held her still. He had understood her pain, and had empathized, but she had to remain as still as possible. He had hissed at her once, and she had stilled, sobbing copiously.

  He had continued to suck. Then he had tasted the venom and had spit it out. Then he had felt one, no two, stingers on his tongue. But the final one had not wanted to move. He's had to resort to taking the knife and gouging it out with the tip.

  “I hate to tell you, but this isn't over yet, Siki,” he had said over her sobs as he tried to calm her. “This is kind of embarrassing, but to kill the pain, I have to piss on you. The ammonia...” his voice had trailed off.

  She had stopped crying and had stared at him, also embarrassed. “I'd prefer if you don't look,” he had said as he untied his scrub pants and moved the waistband down.

  Before she could shut her eyes or turn away, the hot liquid had hit the wound. Almost instantaneously the stinging had lessened, but the ammonia on the torn flesh where he had sucked the venom out had felt fiery.

  But she hadn't been able to turn away. She had watched the stream erupt from the head of his penis, had arced up into the now rising sunrise where it had sparkled in golden droplets, and had followed gravity down onto her foot. She had watched the splashing liquid with a dry mouth.

  Vin had heard her whimper and had looked at her oddly. When he had seen her focus, he had paused in his concentration. The stream had splashed
onto her pants now, the thin material had soaked to her leg, transparent. It had been his turn to swallow hard. Without a word, he had turned so the pee had been aimed right at her crotch, had wetted the fabric and she had moaned and had closed her eyes in pleasure.

  The stream had moved upwards on her body, He had spent an extraordinarily long period of time soaking her chest area so her tits had magically appeared. Then, when he had run out of urine, she had stripped the clothing off of her and they had fucked hard. At one point, Siki had poised above him, squatting, as her own piss had dribbled onto his hard cock as he had thrust into her.

  It had been the first time they'd touched since leaving the Shafts.

  She had forgotten about the pain in her foot by then.

  Her mind shifted back to the present. The Riders were all naked now, save for a makeshift rawhide thong and loincloth. Siki was surprised to see several women in the group, also wearing nothing but a thong. It was eerily silent. She almost felt over-dressed in her stained and filthy scrubs.

  The man in the yellow robe caught sight of Vin and Siki. His gaze made them uncomfortable, but they did not cower. Both stood their ground. Then the man turned and pointed towards two of the Riders, one male and one female. They emerged from the pack, joined hands, and approached the robed man. The man was handed another ceramic bowl from a lackey. He reached into the bowl and started painting the man and the woman with a thick brown substance in his hand. He spoke, almost chanted as he draped them in muck.