The canyons' pale orange and yellow layered walls rose to astounding heights. B used his coordinates and map he printed out to decipher which path to take through the various crevasse and rocks he’d have to go around. He noticed an eerie echo of his ostrich’s feet on stone as they traveled through an oval crevasse. B could feel the electricity in the air like he was being watched. B kept his eyes above him, knowing that the mountain lions liked to pounce from the heights to catch their prey. For a moment, B could have sworn that he saw a black tail peek over the ledge of the canyon once or twice. Then he saw it! He saw the exit! He made his ostrich speed out of the canyons.
B road his bird as fast as the bird could go until B felt safe then hopped off to give the poor thing a break. He shared a cup of water with the bird as they walked north where the stone of the canyon gave way to desert sand. As he neared the end of his trek, he found some figures standing on a sand dune up ahead.
B quickly got his gas mask on and made sure none of his blond hair was showing from under his hat. He then got Fluffy, his bird, to lie down in the dirt, a little trick that he taught the fowl for occasions like this. B gathered his courage, lifted his hands, and started to approach the figures.
As he neared the group of about five men and women it looked as if they were wearing poorly constructed uniforms. All in shirts of varying shades of red with a gold or a yellowish symbol on the back. The symbol looked to be some infinity sign with a snakehead laying on the top and tail on the bottom. Most of these people had various pieces of body armor on and they were all armed.
B cleared his throat catching the attention of a scruffy-looking, red-headed, raider type.
“Are you Jormungrand’s men?” B asked in a deep masked voice.
“What?” The thin, redhead, raider type asked as she raised her weapon toward B.
“Uh- Jormungrand? Ur- Who’s your boss with the messenger?” The intruding hacker asked in a higher-pitched, slightly more panicked voice.
“Larry gets all the messages, right Larry?” The redhead called over to the other side of the hill.
“I sure do!” A fellow on the other side of the hill called back.
“Do you have a message that says that the Omnipresent Bacterium is coming?” B asked with a little more confidence in his voice.
“What he say?” the voice, Larry apparently, asked from the other side of the sand dune.
“He wants to know if Omnipresent Bacterium is coming!” Yelled red.
“Oh. Tell him to buzz off! We have business with that Bacterium not him!” Larry yelled.
“You heard him. Buzz off kid.” Red told him.
“I’m the Omnipresent Bacterium!” B shouted in frustration.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Red as she patted B on the back and pushed him up the hill. “Follow me, and remember, if you come back, we’ll have to kill you.” She said with a cackle. B gave an uneasy laugh with her as they crested the sand dune.
B felt the eyes and, most importantly, their weapons on him so he decided not to look around too much.
Behind the group of red-garbed men and women, was what looked to be the skeletal remains of a spaceship that crashed into a pile of metal rebar and cement. It could have been used for the construction of some old world-building. As B got closer, only the support beams of the spaceship were left along with some panels of the exterior walls. B kicked at one of the walls trying to get a nice piece of metal that could pass off as a belt buckle for his brother. It looked like he’d have to cut the metal himself. It didn’t look like the raiders-trying-to-pass-as-someone’s-personal-army had those tools either.
With the spaceship being a wash, B curiously crept into the remains of the building. Initially, there was only rebar sprouting out of the rubble like a wilting flower. But he felt something give under his feet as he walked around. B paused and hopped where he stood and felt a frighteningly amount of bending happening from under his feet. He took a few steps back and kicked at what was under him. There was a door on the floor! Maybe this trip wasn’t a wash after all.
B had to grab some rebar to pry it open, but once he got the initial prying done, it was surprisingly easy to lift. The sun showed stairs leading downward. B looked down into the darkness and wished that he brought a flashlight until he remembered the M3 came with one.
B felt the air cool as he entered the underground stairway. The walls were smooth as he used the M3 to guide him the best he could. But the light was pretty much useless for B and probably a gimmick for builders to add when they buy their own M3 building kits. B turned off the light when he made it down to the end of the stairs and opened a door.
As B’s eyes adjusted he saw from light from the holes in the ceiling leaking in, the remains of the building on the surface were much smaller than what was underneath. B could tell where the ship crashed, and some more cracks of light with sand falling inside about an old world’s football field away from him in the darkness. He outstretched his hands and felt for the walls to guide him anyway.
He followed a wall to his left and found that there was a sharp corner leading him farther into the darkness. As he pulled himself forward, B tripped over something. As he felt the object, he pulled into the sunlight in the other room with some sunlight so he could examine it. His hands felt a latch, it was an old world’s trunk.
As he opened it, his mind exclaimed, ‘Jackpot!’ The sun gleamed against the chrome of the packages upon packages of rechargeable batteries neatly stacked inside the trunk. B dug through them and much to his liking found the chargers too. He shoved as many chargers and batteries into the pocks of his toolbelt. He could modify them to fit his set up later.
He stumbled back to the room where he found the batteries and found another trunk, and another, and another. B kept going through the hallway and kept pulling out trunks filled with assorted things in them. Cell phones, clothes, laptops, kitchen utensils, books, flash drives, and his favorite thing, a very clean pistol with a package of bullets. The only common theme with these items; they were all old world items.
But back to the gun.
B knew about guns, but his father never let him try one out before. Considering this, he read all sorts of manuals on how guns worked. He was excited to try this one out. B laid the gun out on the top of one of the trunks and pulled the release to reveal the magazine. He clumsily loaded it full of bullets and slid the magazine back into the gun and cocked it. B smiled feeling the weight of the gun in his hand. He took off the safety. Took aim into the darkness. Then fired.
B almost dropped it from the sound alone. He didn’t expect that much of a kickback either; it must have been a pretty high caliber. As he looked up, he noticed there were sparks coming from the opposite wall where his shot hit. He quickly turned the safety back on and stowed the gun on his toolbelt, hoping that he would never need to use it again. B decided to pull his M3 to investigate. He was then reminded of its’ horrible gimmick light. He found a shaving kit mirror and used that to reflect some of the sunlight to the object that continued sparking in the dark.
It was a strange, dirty cylinder with lots of wires and tubes coming from all over the top and bottom. B placed the mirror down in the right position so that he could have some light. He cautiously walked to the other side of the room where a hallway had been hidden in the darkness.
B approached the cylinder in the darkness surprised he didn’t trip on anything. It was much taller than he thought it would be; standing at about eight feet tall. The sparking was from a few wires that he had severed by accident with the bullet. The wires were bumping against each other and hitting other conductive metals. B reached up to tied the wires so they weren’t sparking anymore, but it was too tall for him to reach. B decided it would be safe enough for it not to get electrocuted.
Then B felt the cylinder with his leather gloved hands. He found an indentation on the right side, perfect for B’s grip. B pulled at it but it didn’t budge. He groped at the machinery some more and he did, fingers found a button that made a filthy monitor spring to life with light, to the left of the machinery.
B was amazed that the monitor, heck, any of this stuff, was still working. He wanted to find the power source for all of this. But the monitor beckoned him. It was the usual thing he saw on old technology, like laptops when he could get them working. It was the ransomware from Proxima. He did his normal debugging routine by hooking up his M3, running the script he wrote, and rebooted the machine. In the old world English, it now reads:
Suspended animation patient: Nova, Lola
Injuries: Severe blood loss due to bullet wound in the abdomen
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Birthday: 03/24/82
Sex: Female
Weight: 130 lbs.
Height: 4 feet 11 inches
Stasis status: Disturbed
Instructions: Add blood immediately
B could pick out the words and numbers individually but didn’t understand what they meant altogether. There was a blinking red light and the sound of something unlocking. B tried to pull on the indentation again. This time, with some effort, the cylinder opened. Upon opening it, a body of a small, deathly pale, sickly skeletal woman, draped in a thin paper dress fell onto B. He tried to push her back in but was caught in the mess of wires and tubing.
B screamed out in a panic.
He was about the drop the limp, black-haired, ghost of a human when her weight was lifted off of him. B quickly used this opportunity to untangle himself from the wires and tubing, then looked to see who was helping him.
B‘s eyes followed the wires to one of Jormungrand’s men in one of the poorly constructed uniforms. This uniform looked worse for wear and seemed to come with glowing red goggles and a strange split cape. The tall man’s dark skin seemed to oppose the woman’s deathly pale skin.
“We heard a gunshot from up top.” The serious man said as he adjusted the body in his grip. “They thought you were going to attack us and I drew the short straw to see what you were up to…” his voice trailed off as he did a double-take at the woman’s face.
“How long has she been here?” He asked in a hushed whisper.
“Uh… I don’t know.” B replied dumbly not knowing what his reaction was about.
The man looked past B intently.
“Add blood immediately.” The man read apparently looking at the screen. He gently laid the woman on the ground and got out a white box with a red cross on it.
“She needs help.” The man said as he rummaged through the box.
“What can I do to help?” B asked as he took a knee across from the man.
The man clicked his tongue in frustration, then pulled out a tube with needles on the end, and a strange red plastic bag.
“She needs a blood transfusion. I have a liter of blood on me, but she’ll need more than that to get back from the dead. We’ll need to give her some of ours. Have you given blood before?” He asked.
“Like a sample, once before,” B admitted.
“What’s your blood type?” He asked as he checked the red plastic bag.
“I think it was A something?” B said struggling to remember.
The man clicked his tongue again and ran his hand through his short-cropped hair. He then pushed one end of the sharp needle tube into the red bag and the other end into the woman’s neck.
“The blood in the bag is type O and I’m type B. She’s AB so everything should be ok, but I’ll use that elf purifying solution just in case.” The glowing goggled man said then squeezed the blood bag. The red from the bag traveled up the tube until it entered her body.
“Check her stomach, will ya?” The man asked.
B pulled back the thin paper dress to see stitches holding together a 6 six-inch-long cut in her abdomen.
“Do you have any bio gel? We have prehistoric tech holding her together.” B asked a bit grossed out.
“She won’t like having alien tech used on her.” The man replied with a groan, as he got the second blood bag ready.
“First off, they liked to be called ‘Centurions.’ Second off, we’re already using the purifying solution. What's the difference?” B asked, exasperated.
The other groaned.
“But she hates experimental stuff being done on her.” Him
“It’s not experimental!” B
“But she doesn’t know that.” He was exasperated now. “Fine. Here,” he handed B the tube of bio gel and a pair of rubber gloves, “you do it so I’m don’t get yelled at.”
B nodded and put on the gloves. B dipped his gloved hand into the tub and slathered the bright green salve onto the woman’s cut, then rubbed it in. B rubbed in the salve until the cut mended itself. He remembered a rumor that went around that a human doctor once got webbed fingers from using bio gel without using a glove. Apparently, it was because of the pro-growth and mending cell stuff.
As B finished rubbing in the bio gel, he looked over to the man who put a new needle on the end of the tube and gestured to the younger of the conscious two.
“My turn?” B asked.
“Yup.” The man said.
B took off the gloves and slid over towards the man. B rolled up his sleeve for the man, who brought out a new needle and a bottle of purifying solution. The man put a few drops of purifying solution on B’s arm. The dirt on his arm disintegrated.
“Alright, this is going to pinch, so hold on tight.” The man asked.
B held on and winced at the pain of the needle going into his skin. He was slightly grossed out by seeing his blood being drained into the tube, so he looked quickly at the man.
“What’s your name?” B asked quickly, trying to get his mind off the light-headedness that was slowly coming over him.
The man chuckled.
“Asks the kid in the mask. Why don’t you tell me, stranger?” He asked.
B pouted for a moment.
“I’ll take off my mask if you take off your goggles,” B said slyly.
“Alright, here’s the deal.” The stranger said with a sigh. “You can only take out what you can carry.”
B huffed as the stranger changed the subject.
“So, I’m going to give over the recommended amount of blood I mean. So you can carry her out of here. I’ll distract them when you get out far enough away and-” the man was cut off by B’s sudden realization.
“Wait you want me to take her?!” B looked closer at the man. “Why not recruit her into Jormangrand’s weird gang of raiders?”
“Because I’m not a raider, and neither is she!” the man snapped. His glowing red goggles snapped forward into B’s eyes, yet the light didn’t hurt.
“Jormungrand has been hiding her from me for decades. I thought she was dead all this time.” He continued in a more subdued voice. “I can’t let her die to Jormungrand again.”
B was quiet for a moment.
“I have no idea what’s going on between her and you. But if Jormungrand is as bad as you say he is, I’ll take her back to my town.” B promised him.
The man nodded then took the needle out from B’s arm, bandaged it, and did the necessary preparations for his own blood donation.
“How do you //not// know how bad Jormungrand is?” he asked, then hissed as he pushed his new needle into his arm.
“I’m just trying to get a quick buck off the guy! I didn’t know he did crimes against humanity. You think I do research?” B said.
This made the man laugh.
“When you get the time, look up the founding of CrudeOil city. It’ll be a very enlightening subject for you, IF you can find anything on the internet- I mean- messenger, about it that is.” The man replied as he sat back and relaxed.
B took out some jerky and crackers and offered some to the man. The man nodded and took some crackers.
“This will help with blood sugar, right?” B asked.
“Heh, yeah. Orange juice would be better though.” The man replied.
“I’ve never had an orange before. Is it good?” B asked.
“They are the best.” The man said.
The man took out the needle and tube from the woman, then the rest of the tubes from the woman. B looked for something to dress her in. He found an oversized shirt and some fairly loose shorts to put her in along with some combat boots. He didn’t bother with socks. Once she was dressed and fully de-wired and de-tubed from the machine, B picked her up. She was more bulky than heavy, so B decided to carry her bridal style to the surface. As they passed the room with the sunlight cracks, B noticed that the purifying solution made her hair blue. The man had to help B get to the stairs.
As soon as they turned the corner for the stairs, the man turned and placed his hand on B’s shoulder.
“From this point on, just go with it. And don’t look behind you.” He said, then guided B in front of him and gave him a push. B stumbled into the light of the stairs. He could feel the man’s rifle pressed on his back and gulped. He looked up to see two more rifles pointed downward toward him.
“It’s ok Larry, Jess,” the man said with a jeering tone. “I got him. Anyway, the bacterium's hands are a little full right now.”
Two heads poked over the edge of the ledge leading down the stairs to get a look at B who was quickly pushed, again up the stairs. The sun was high in the sky which made it hard to see the two faces looking at him and reminded B that he had to get back fast.
B reached the top of the stairs and couldn’t help but notice that there were more guns pointed toward him and the woman.
“Well, looky here! The little bug’s got a lady friend. Maybe we should go through these ruins too!” the redhead woman from earlier said with a whistle.
“I was told I could take anything I can carry!” B yelled with as much courage as he could muster.
“That’s true,” Red said as she raised her rifle and approached B, “But now you have to put up your end of the bargain. Give us the flash drive.”
Before B could protest, the man behind him spoke up.
“I have it, Jess.” He said crossing by B’s peripheral vision to give it to the redhead.
B couldn’t help but glance in his direction then stifled a gasp. The man had dark brown bug wings, not a cape. He was a Fea.
B snapped his head back in front of him as he felt a bead of sweat drip down the side of his face.
“Thanks, Moth.” She said addressing him. “Hey, Larry! Get your butt over here with your messenger and check to see if this thing is actually the flash drive we want.”
While Jess was distracted by getting the flash drive to Larry, B felt wind and sand start to kick up toward him. B turned away from the source. He felt a push to his back and took this as his hint to start making his way out of there.
As he did so, the man’s voice, yet loud and booming, called out, “I have a premonition! The ruins will cave in! We have five minutes! We have no time to lose! Drop everything and run!”
For some reason unbeknownst to B, this worked. All the red-clad people started running to gather their things from their makeshift camp on the opposite side of the sand dunes from where B was running off to.
B ran up the sandy hill, over the crest, and somehow kept his balance as he quickly trudged down the other side of the hill. He made it to Fluffy, who happened to be pecking at a motionless tumbleweed around the same place where B had left her, with no incident. B got the woman on to the back of the bird, with so many questions buzzing through his mind.