by J. Thorn
So, there I was, standing in the middle of the main road through Sellville, without a clue which way to go. North, South? The road led straight on and out of town into the desert in both directions, and it occurred to me that I hadn't the slightest idea what was in either direction.
I did the only thing that I could think of. I took a coin out of my pocket, flipped it, watched it land on heads, picked it up, and turned and walked off North.
I didn't stop to search any of the buildings in Sellville before I left the town. Joshua had been using what he found in that town for years and told me that he'd pretty much stripped it clean. I walked straight up the highway and out onto the desert road. Now I come from a place called Brady in Texas, and I've seen my share of barren places and lifeless stretches of road that seem to go on forever, but the road out of Sellville will haunt me for all time. You see when Nua'lath invaded this world his armies swept over the lands quicker than anyone could have imagined. It didn't matter what the people threw against him, technology or none, the sheer amount of creatures pouring out of those portals ensured that the onslaught was endless. Places like Sellville were over-run in a matter of minutes.
Along that road were the centuries old dried up and dead remains of that few minutes. Cars were turned over with their roofs ripped off, bicycles and motorcycles and all manner of other vehicles ruined along the side of the road with their long dead inhabitants lying not far from them. I wouldn't even try to count the amount of dried up skeletons I saw.
In the end I just kept walking and tried not to think about it.
About twenty miles out of the town I found a lorry parked on the side of the road. It was quiet as I approached, and I didn't expect what happened next.
There were a few crates lying next to the truck and I looked in them to find a bunch of sealed-up, tinned food, mostly preserves and such, even a few pots of honey, which never goes off and is like new again if you just add a little water and give it a stir. Did you know that, son?
So, I couldn't ignore the find and hoped that there might be more of it inside the truck. It really didn't occur to me why there might be broken crates outside of the truck but the chain on the back door was still locked up. I didn't even consider that someone might have deliberately locked the thing back up again.
The lock was rusted, but still held fast. I grabbed a rock off of the side of the road and slammed it a few times until it broke open. I was just about to swing the door wide open when I heard the first moan.
Now don't go misunderstanding. Joshua had taught me all about a lot of the creatures that I might come across, creatures left behind that were the remnants of the invasion. He even taught me where I was likely to find them. I should have known, and should have checked.
I took a few steps back from the truck and I had only just levelled both shotguns when the doors burst open and out they came.
Shamblers.
Lots of them.
There were a dozen at least. They must have been locked up in there for decades. They came stumbling out of the back of the truck, falling all over themselves to get at me.
Did I ever explain to you about Shamblers? Yeah I know that you've seen them before, I mean did I ever tell you what I learned about them in the early days? Joshua told me that of all the creatures that I might come across, those were the most deadly to a mortal human. One scratch, or a bite, anything and a day later you're one of them. It's the disease they carry, you see. I don't know where it comes from, which world the Horde destroyed to discover it, but they use them first every time. The gates from wherever they are coming open up and out pour Shamblers, by the millions. I even suspect that they herd them along like some kind of deadly cattle. Those things spread like nothing you've ever known. Everyone they attack ends up dying within hours and joining them. Entire cities of people, overwhelmed and turned into plague-bearing walking corpses before any of the other kinds of Horde creatures even take a step out of the portals.
So, there I was, stepping backwards along that road, one step at a time, waiting for the shotguns to recharge so that I could take another one down.
Boom.
Shambler mess everywhere.
You know that a bullet doesn't always stop them? Oh no, it has to be well placed to take them out. Aim for the head or the neck, either will do the trick. Take that damn thing's head off and it won't move again. You shoot a leg off or an arm, and all you have is a slower Shambler. That, my son, is how they got their name in the first place. Doesn't matter how hard you hit them, unless you get a head shot in they will just keep shambling along.
That day was the first time I saw one, and I was about a quarter of a mile away from the truck when I finally took down the last of them. Problem was I didn't realise that I'd drawn the attention of something else with all the noise those Shamblers were making. My guns were pretty quiet, that's how they are made to be, but a dozen walking plague bearers groaning at the top of their voices, through rotten vocal chords was the problem.
I collapsed in the middle of the road, took a deep breath, then stood up to make my way back over to the truck, hoping that all that trouble had been worth it, and the thing took me from the side. It darted out from between two cars that were a few feet away and nearly took my arm off. It slammed into me with such a force that I felt things break inside me.
The shock was the worst, and then the pain. I fell sideways and hit my shoulder, dropping one of my shotguns. I was already coughing up blood and my arm was lying limp by my side. My head was swimming and my vision blurred, but I was conscious enough to know that the creature was coming back, and I rolled over. The pain that shot through me as I rolled over my mangled arm was enough to make me scream at the top of my voice.
Then I saw it, coming at me fast from along the road. I raised the shotgun just in time and blew its face out of the back of its ass. Then I lay there, hurting like I had never hurt before.
I don't know how I managed to crawl all the way to the truck and pull myself up inside it, but I did. I don't even remember doing it. I do remember the feel of blood pouring out of me and thinking god damn it, I didn't even survive out here for a day on my own. Best damn pupil, my ass.
You not gonna eat the rest of that son? No? You're sure? Hand it over here then. I'm still famished.
Now, you've only seen the Kre'esh from a distance haven't you? Well, up close they are not a pretty sight, like some kind of mixture of a big cat and crocodile. Their skin is all slick with some kind of slime, and leathery. They're pretty big things, fast as the wind and strong as hell, with claws and teeth as sharp as any blade I've ever known. Nasty creatures and very dangerous. You don't let them get close.
I lay in that truck for two days, barely conscious, two whole days where something could have come along, smelled the blood and tried to make a meal of me, but I woke up, felt terrible, sat up and moved both of my arms.
That was the strangest feeling I'd ever had. That creature, a Kre'esh, had nearly torn my arm right out of its socket, but it had healed up with barely a scar. I lay back on the floor of that truck and laughed as loud as you can imagine. I was damn near invincible! It didn't matter if I got hurt, just so long as I didn't get chewed up and swallowed completely, I was going to lie down for a while and wake up good as new a few hours or a few days later.
You were born with that ability, son, so you couldn't possibly know what it feels like to suddenly go from being a frail mortal to some kind of super human. It doesn't just make you feel good, it's liberating and my head swam with the realisation.
But I'm getting side-tracked here.
I took off on the road again, still heading north after stocking up on what I found in the truck. I found an old shopping trolley discarded on the side of the road that could still be pushed along with reasonable ease, and I filled it up. I also dumped my rucksack in it and laid my shotguns on the top, right where I could get at them, fast, if I needed to.
It was about six months before I found the first sig
ns of human life, or should I say, it found me.
Most nights I would find a vehicle on the side of the road that didn't have all the windows smashed out, hide my stuff away in it, and cover up with a few old blankets that I'd scavenged along the way. Not the safest place ever, but better than nothing and it seemed to work for me. Well, one night I was fast asleep under my blankets when a noise woke me up. How it hadn't woke me up already I don't know because it was loud as hell, and I had just poked my shotgun and my head up out of those blankets for about a second before the headlights nearly blinded me and the van I was camped up in was shunted off the road and down into the ditch.
Those few seconds as the van rolled over scared the crap out me, so much so that my shotgun went off, taking one of the doors away with it. After a few rolls the van came to a halt on its roof and I fell out of the back door without either of my weapons at hand. I was still sitting there, stunned, when I heard someone speaking to me.
"You okay there mister?"
I looked around, dazzled by the headlights on the monster of a vehicle that was now dominating the highway. It was still pretty dark and I couldn't judge what time it was.
"Mister?"
Then I saw him, standing a few feet away, up on edge of the slope. He was carrying the nastiest looking gun I'd ever seen, some kind of multi barrelled chain gun, but he wasn't pointing it at me.
"Yeah, I'm okay, I think," I said, shaking my head.
"I'm real sorry about that, I wasn't expecting anyone to be hiding away in one of these vehicles on the side of the road except maybe the odd Shambler. What you doing all the way out here on your own anyway? You need help? You hurt?"
"Not sure, I think I did my ankle, but not too badly."
"Damn that, I'm sorry. Hey how bout you grab up your stuff and hitch a ride. I got space enough."
I did as he suggested, glad for the chance to not be walking the road every day. Wasn't until I hauled the first of my gear out the van and up onto the road that I saw the man for the first time.
He was huge. I mean huge. He stood about six and a half feet tall and was as black as the night is. I could have wet myself at the sight of him standing there with a gun that looked like it belonged on a tripod or a turret, but he flashed me a smile that was as friendly as you can imagine and somehow I knew that we were going to get along. That's right son. That's how I met Bailey all those years ago, and it's good that you remember about him.
Bailey was one of the friendliest and most trustworthy men I ever met in my whole life, and I've had my share of good friends in this world over the years, and the world that I had left behind. He was a merchant back then, travelling in that monstrous converted lorry across the wastelands between the different settlements that had still managed to survive. His vehicle used to be an old forty tonne haulage vehicle, just like the multitude that you see jack-knifed on the side of the road everywhere, except Bailey was an engineer like no one else and he'd made the damn thing run on the same power cells that Shredder guns run on. Oh, yeah, I forget that you know that already. That damn truck still sits out the back of his house even though he's been gone for years.
You know it was the two of us that fixed that plough on the front. Yeah, I helped him weld the thing together and attach it. It fell off about four times before we finally got it fixed up. That thing could clear the cars off a road at ten miles per hour. That's not to mention how easily it could plough down a Horde on the road.
I slept in a compartment at the back that Bailey had used to store tools at one time. He got fed up of me snoring in the cab every night and decided that I needed a room of my own, at the other end of the truck. You know he never let me drive in all the years we travelled together.
"You're too clumsy for this lady." That's what he always used to say. Too clumsy.
I guess I was.
Started off that I was just going to travel with him to the nearest settlement, a place called Ryefields, that was about three hundred miles from where he picked me up, but that changed after a couple of days. Me and Bailey, we just hit it off right from the start. He showed me the ways of the scavenger, the way he made his living by hunting through the ruins for anything that might be of use. It was amazing to learn from him, he knew just where to look for whatever it was he had on his list at the time, just somehow seemed to know where to find it. I often wondered how he did that, but I think that it was just an instinct learned over many years.
We arrived in Ryefields and I was disappointed to find only a smattering of buildings tucked away in a valley that was well off of the road. We didn't have any trouble getting up there. That monster truck could get over just about any terrain if Bailey took his time.
A hundred people lived there at best, with walls fifteen feet high and made of stacked up cars surrounding the whole place. They were a rough living folk, with barely any graces about them and they didn't have the slightest of clues about anything I asked them of their history.
Bailey didn't seem fazed by it.
"Don't you worry buddy. If you stick with me, I'll take you all over the place, to every town that there is. We'll find your histories."
"Are you asking me to ride shotgun with you?"
"I am if you're up for it," he said with that big glowing smile of his. "The road's a lonely place, and for a useless xeno you're not too bad for company."
I laughed at that. Xeno. That's what he called me and that's why if I took you to nearly any of the other towns, which I will do one day, you'll hear them call me that. Bailey gave me that name, and I was kinda pleased about it. My name was another piece of my past that I could just let go and forget about.
Come on boy, I've got something I need to show you. Didn't just bring you out here for a crap shoot, even though that's what I told your mother. Oh don't you worry. I wouldn't take you anywhere that I didn't think you could handle. It'll be dark, but it will be worth it.
See that building up there, that tall one with half of the roof crumbling down? Well, that is part of what I was sent here to find all those years ago. Joshua asked me to find where the last stand was and we're at it now. Problem was finding someone who knew anything about their history back then.
I travelled with Bailey for fifteen years before I found anything of use. Town after town he took me to, and one after the other I became even more disillusioned with the idea. I began to think that it was a lost cause. That was until we came to a settlement that had thrived, in the upper floors of a few blocks of tenement buildings, in a city whose name had been long forgotten.
I learned a lot from the people that lived there. They seemed to pride themselves in their history, even though they forgot the name of the city somehow. Maybe that was deliberate.
They named their town Balesoul, after Alex Balesoul, their founder. When the Horde armies had swept across they lands, a bunch of folk had hidden themselves away in the basements of the buildings in that neighbourhood. Now, that wasn't unusual in any way, and most of the time the Horde just ripped the doors off and killed them anyway, but there was something different about how those buildings had been built. Back before the invasion, and years before it had become a place for people to live in, it had been a hideout place for a group of very clever smugglers. I guess not clever enough because one day they got caught. That's of no matter though, what did matter was the fortress of a storehouse that was underneath that tenement block, and Balesoul had found it years before and bought the entire block on the cheap, just because it was a rough neighbourhood.
Well, when the invasion came he ushered everybody in the block down into the basement and they sat the whole thing out as the Horde destroyed everything above ground in a matter of days.
Once it was over they came back up and took back the block. They blocked up all the windows on the ground floors and made the place into a veritable castle. You know, they had gardens there, up on the roof of each of the buildings.
It was in that town that I found an old man called Aben Hoxley. He'd been
their library keeper all of his life and I'd guess he was hitting a hundred years old or close. He was the ugliest man I've ever seen in my life, with crooked teeth, a nose the size of my fist, and eyes that looked like they might pop out of his head any second, but boy was he a story teller. I sat and listened to all the tales of how they rebuilt, how they took one block at a time by building bridges across the streets. Each time they would force out the critters and block up all the ground floors, just as they had the first building. They even found groups of other people, hidden away, that had survived.
Aben had a voice that rattled like he had something stuck in his throat, but he sure loved to talk.
"You know," he told me once, "When I was born, and grew up on the rooftops, we had about a tenth of the city blocks reclaimed, and we were always short of food. But this guy, Saul Balesoul, that was Alex Balesoul's descendant, he took me down into that huge warehouse under the ground and he asked me if I had ever grown mushrooms. I hadn't, but I looked around at all that open, dark space and realised that he was actually asking me to find out how. You know, over the weeks and months we hauled soil from the cellars of other buildings and covered all that open space. All the time we were looking for mushrooms. One day this kid came dashing in. He'd been running all the way across the bridges and walkways of fifteen blocks carrying this box. It was a grow-your-own mushroom kit. Get that! That box was old, from right back in the days before the invasion, but it was packed and sealed and un-opened. Still good as new."
Aben would laugh at the top of his voice every few minutes whilst he was telling a tale.
"We took the instruction book in that kit, the boy and I, and we read it, and we read it. Then we went right on ahead and stuck those spores in little clusters all over the place. Took about two years to get them to spread, but those mushrooms fed us all for years. I got mighty sick of them, though. Course, these days we got pretty much all of the town re-captured and there's a lot of roof gardens, also some on the ground where a whole block of houses was re-captured that had an area in the middle that we could block off. Most folks don't like walking on ground level now though. Roof tops are in their blood, you see."